iiixiusL  y 


i  fy     I  I  '  t}    I 


LIBRARY 


b 


THE  GLORY  OF  THE  COMING 


BY    IRVIN    S.    COBB 


FICTION 

Those  Times  and  These 

Local  Color 

Old  Judge  Priest 

FiBBLE,  D.  D. 

Back  Home 

The  Escape  of  Mr.  Trimm 

The  Thunders  of  Silence 


WIT  AND  HUMOR 

"Speaking  of  Operations- 
Europe  Revised 
Roughing  It  De  Luxe 
Cobb's  Bill  of  Fare 
Cobb's  Anatomy 


MISCELLANY 

The  Glory  of  the  Coming 

Paths  of  Glory 

"Speaking  of  Prussians " 


GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


^•0/    II 


THE  GLORY  OF 
THE  COMING 

WHAT  MINE  EYES  HAVE  SEEN  OF  AMERICANS 

IN  ACTION  IN  THIS  YEAR  OF  GRACE 

AND  ALLIED  ENDEAVOR 


BY 

IRVIN  S.  COBB 

AUTHOR  OF  "BACK  HOME," 

"OLD  JUDGE  PRIEST," 

ETC.,  ETC. 


NEW  ^%S^  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


o'/ 


COPYHIGHT,  1918, 
BY   GEOBGE   H.  DORAN   COMPANY 


CC35 


COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY   THE   CURTIS   PUBLISHING   COMPANY 


PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES   OF   AMERICA 


i 


TO 

GEORGE  H.  BURR,  Esquire 


FOREWORD 


This  book  is  made  up  of  articles  written 
abroad  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1918  and 
cabled  or  mailed  back  for  publication  at  home. 
For  convenience  in  arrangement,  a  few  of  these 
papers  have  been  broken  up  into  sectional  sub- 
divisions with  new  chapter  headings  inserted; 
otherwise  the  matter  is  here  presented  practic- 
ally in  its  original  form.  ^  ,    ,    i , 

It  has  been  given  to  the  writer  to  behold 
widely  dissimilar  aspects  of  the  Great  War. 
As  a  neutral  observer,  hailing  from  a  neutral 
country,  I  was  a  witness,  m  Belgium,  in  north- 
em  France,  in  Germany  and  in  England,  to 
some  of  its  first  stages.    That  was  back  m  1914 
when  I  was  for  awhile  with  the  British,  then  for 
a  period  with  the  Belgian  forces  afield,  then  for 
a  much  longer  period  with  the  German  armies 
and  finally  with  the  British  again.    I  was  of  like 
mind  then  with  all  my  professional  brethren  serv- 
ing publications  in  non-belligerent  countries,  ex- 
cepting one  or  two  or  three  of  a  more  discerning 
vision  than  the  rest.     Behind  the  perfection  of 
the  German  fighting  machine  I  did  not  see  the 
hideous  malignant  brutality  which  was  there. 

[ix] 


FOREWORD 


In  the  first  half  of  this  present  year,  as  a 
partisan  on  the  side  of  my  country  and  its  fed- 
erated associates,  I  visited  England  and  for  a 
space  of  months  travelled  about  over  France, 
with  two  incursions  into  that  small  corner  of 
Flanders  which  at  this  time  remained  in  the 
hands  of  the  Allies. 

I  have  seen  the  Glory  of  the  Coming.  I 
have  watched  the  American  Expeditionary 
Force  grow  from  a  small  thing  into  a  mighty 
thing — the  mightiest  thing,  I  veritably  believe, 
that  since  conscious  time  began,  has  been  un- 
dertaken by  a  free  people  entering  upon  a  war 
on  foreign  shores  with  nothing  personally  to 
gain  except  a  principle,  with  nothing  to  main- 
tain except  honour,  with  nothing  to  keep  ex- 
cept their  national  self-respect.  In  this  war 
our  only  spoils  out  of  the  victory  will  be  the 
establishment  of  the  rights  of  other  peoples  to 
rule  themselves,  our  only  territorial  enlarge- 
ments will  be  the  graves  where  our  fallen  dead 
sleep  on  alien  soil,  our  only  tangible  reward  for 
all  that  we  are  giving  in  blood  and  treasure  and 
effort  and  self-denial,  will  be  the  knowledge 
that  in  a  world  crisis,  when  the  liberties  of  the 
world  were  imperilled,  we,  as  a  world-power 
and  as  perhaps  the  most  conspicuous  example 
in  the  world,  of  a  democracy,  did  our  duty  by 
ourselves,  by  our  republican  neighbours  over- 
seas and  by  our  children  and  their  children  and 
their  children's  children. 

No  longer  ago  than  last  March,  it  was  a 

[x] 


FOREWORD 


small  thing  we  had  done,  as  viewed  in  the  light 
of  our  then  visible  performances  in  France  and 
an  even  smaller  thing  as  viewed  in  the  light  of 
what  our  public  men,  many  of  them,  and  our 
newspapers,  some  of  them,  had  promised  on 
our  behalf  nearly  a  year  earlier  when  we  came 
into  the  war.  At  the  beginning  there  was  an 
army  to  be  created;  there  was  a  navy  to  be 
built  up;  there  was  a  continent  to  be  crossed 
and  an  ocean  to  be  traversed  if  we  meant  to 
link  up  all  the  States  of  our  Union  with  all  our 
plans;  there  was  a  military  establishment  to 
be  started  from  the  grass  roots;  there  were 
ninety  millions  of  us  to  be  set  from  the  ways  of 
peace  into  the  ways  of  war.  But  because  some 
of  our  politicians  professed  to  believe  that  by 
virtue  of  our  resources,  our  energy  and  our  so- 
called  business  efficiency  we  could  do  the  im- 
possible in  an  impossibly  brief  time,  and  more 
especially  because,  among  the  masses  of  Con- 
tinental Europe  there  was  a  tendency  to  look 
upon  us  as  a  race  of  miracle-workers  living  in  a 
magic-land  and  accomplishing  unutterable  won- 
ders at  will,  and  finally  because  these  same 
masses  accepted  the  words  of  our  self-appoint- 
ed, self -anointed  prophets  as  they  might  accept 
Gospel-writ,  a  profound  disappointment  over 
the  seeming  failure  of  America  to  produce  her 
legions  on  European  soil,  followed  hard  upon 
txie  exaltation  which  had  prevailed  among  our 
Allies  immediately  after  we  broke  with  the 
common  enemy  of  mankind.    In  France  I  know 

[xi] 


FOREWORD 


this  to  have  been  true;  in  other  countries  I  have 
reason  to  beHeve  it  was  true.  As  month  after 
month  passed  until  nearly  a  twelvemonth  had 
gone  by  and  still  the  armed  millions  from  Amer- 
ica did  not  materialise,  I  think  it  only  natural 
and  inevitable  that,  behind  their  hands  and 
under  their  breaths,  the  Poilus  called  our  sol- 
diers "Boy  Scouts"  and  spoke  of  our  effort  as 
"The  Second  Children's  Crusade."  For  thanks 
be  to  a  few  men  among  us  who  worked  with 
their  mouths  rather  than  with  their  hands,  the 
French  populace  had  been  led  to  expect  so  very 
much  of  us  in  so  short  a  space  of  time  and  yet 
there  now  was  presented  before  their  eyes,  so 
very  little  as  the  tangible  proofs  of  our  voiced 
determination  to  offer  all  that  we  had  and  all 
that  we  were,  in  the  fight  for  decency  and  for 
humanity. 

Do  you  remember  when,  on  or  about  the  be- 
ginning of  the  last  week  of  March,  General 
Pershing  offered  to  the  Allied  command  the 
available  mobile  strength  of  the  army  under 
him,  for  service  to  aid  the  British,  the  French, 
the  Belgians  and  the  Portuguese  in  stemming 
the  great  German  offensive  which  had  been 
launched  on  the  twenty -first  day  of  that  month  .^^ 
Pershing  made  the  offer  in  all  good  faith  and  in 
all  good  faith  it  was  accepted.  But  at  that 
moment  all  he  could  spare  out  of  the  trenches 
and  send  across  France  from  the  East  to  the 
West  to  go  into  the  line  in  threatened  Picardy 
was  one  division  of  considerably  less  than  forty 

[xii] 


FOREWORD 


thousand  men;  a  puny  handful  as  they  measure 
fighting  forces  these  times;  and  that  division 
was  stayed  in  part  on  French  rations,  equipped 
in  part  with  borrowed  French  ordnance  and 
provided  in  large  part  with  French  munitions. 
Without  French  aid  it  probably  could  not  have 
gone  forward  at  all;  without  French  aid  it 
could  not  have  maintained  itself  after  it  had 
taken  over  the  Normandy  sectors  to  which 
Foch  assigned  it.  It  was  not  the  fault  of  our 
military  leaders  abroad,  perhaps  it  was  not  the 
fault  of  our  people  at  home  that,  fifty  weeks 
after  entering  the  war,  we  were  able  to  render 
only  so  small  a  share  of  immediate  help  in  this 
most  critical  juncture  of  the  entire  war.  But 
it  was  the  fault  of  those  who  had  boasted,  those 
who  had  bragged,  those  who  had  preached  at 
home  what  they  did  not  practice,  that  the 
French  people  were  beginning  to  think — and 
to  whisper — that  the  United  States  had  failed 
to  live  up  to  its  pledges.  These  people  had  no 
way  of  knowing  what  we  were  accomplishing 
over  here;  they  must  judge  by  what  they  might 
see  for  themselves  over  there. 

The  great  awakening  came,  though,  before 
the  first  of  June.  Over-night,  it  almost  seemed, 
our  army  began  to  function  as  an  army.  The 
sea  became  alive  with  our  transports,  the  land 
became  alive  with  our  troops.  Instead  of  two 
hundred  and  some  odd  thousands  of  men  on 
French  soil,  we  had  half  a  million,  then  a  mil- 
lion, then  a  million  and  a  half.    No  longer  were 

[  xiii  ] 


FOREWORD 


our  forces  without  tanks  of  American  manu- 
facture,- without  machine-guns  of  American 
manufacture,  without  a  proper  and  adequate 
equipment  of  heavy  guns  of  American  manu- 
facture. There  was  even  hope  that  our  aero- 
plane production,  up  until  then  the  most  ghast- 
ly and  pitiable  failure  of  all,  might  by  autumn, 
begin  to  measure  up,  in  some  degree  at  least,  to 
the  sanguine  press-notices  of  the  year  before — 
1917.  We  who  in  France  could  see  the  growth 
of  this  thing  came  to  feel  that  perhaps  all  of 
our  dollar-a-year  commercial  giants  were  not 
being  grossly  overpaid  and  we  came  proudly  to 
realise  that  our  country  now  was  responding 
with  all  its  strength  to  the  responsibilities  it 
had  assumed.  The  Yanks  were  no  longer  on 
the  way;  they  were  here — here  in  number  suf- 
ficient to  enable  us  to  lend  a  strong  and  ever- 
strengthening  hand  in  the  turning-back  of  the 
enemy  and  in  bringing  closer  the  certainty  of 
a  complete  triumph  over  him.  It  was  the 
Glory  of  the  Coming.  Moreover  it  should  not 
be  forgotten  in  the  reckoning-up  of  causes  and 
results  that  the  lodging  of  the  allied  command 
in  the  hands  of  one  captain — the  most  power- 
ful single  factor  in  inspiring  victory — was 
brought  about  largely  through  American  in- 
sistence upon  the  election  of  a  single  leader 
and  a  unified  leadership  for  all  the  forces  of  the 
confederated  nations  in  the  field  of  the  western 
theatre  of  the  war. 

I  sometimes  think  the  most  splendid  thing  I 

[xiv  ] 


FOREWORD 


have  seen  in  this  war  was  not  some  individual 
act  of  heroism,  or  devotion,  or  resolution — 
glorious  though  it  may  have  been.  I  sometimes 
think  the  most  splendid  thing  I  have  seen  was 
the  making-over  of  nations,  literally  before  my 
eyes,  in  the  fiery  furnace  of  this  war.  I  have 
seen  little  Belgium  wearing  the  marks  of  her 
transcendent  sacrifice  and  her  unutterable  suf- 
fering, as  the  Redeemer  of  ^lan  wore  the  nail- 
marks  of  His  Crucifixion;  I  have  seen  Britain 
transformed  from  the  fat,  contented,  slothful, 
old  grandmother  of  the  nations,  sitting  by  the 
chimney-piece  and  feeding  herself  torpid  on  her 
plenty,  into  the  militant  Britain  of  yore  that 
has  put  so  many  millions  of  her  sons  into  khaki 
and  so  many  of  the  ladies  of  Germany  into 
mourning;  I  have  seen  France  become  an  in- 
comparably glorious  model,  before  all  the  world 
for  all  time,  of  the  heights  to  which  a  free  peo- 
ple may  rise  in  defence  of  national  pledges, 
national  integrity  and  national  existence;  and  I 
have  seen  my  own  country  taking  her  proper 
place,  in  the  most  desperate  emergency  that 
ever  confronted  civilisation,  as  a  people  united, 
determined,  valiant  and  steadfast — the  spirit 
of  the  New  World  binding  herself  with  steel 
grapples  to  the  best  that  is  in  the  Old  World 
and  inevitably  taking  the  first  steps  in  the 
long-delayed  campaign  of  understanding  and 
conciliation  and  renewed  affection  with  our 
kinspeople  and  our  brethren  of  the  British  Isles 
who  speak  the  same  mother-tongue  which  we 

[xv] 


FOREWORD 


speak  and  with  whom  we  are  joint  inheritors  of 
Runnymede  and  Agincourt. 

As  I  write  these  lines,  victory  appears  to  be 
very  near.  Seemingly,  it  is  coming  one  year 
sooner  than  we,  who  were  in  France  and  Bel- 
gium in  the  first  months  of  1918,  thought  it 
would  come.  And  speaking  for  my  fellow- 
American  correspondents  as  well  as  for  myself, 
I  make  so  bold  as  to  say  that  all  of  us  are  de- 
voutly hopeful  that  our  leaders  will  make  it  a 
complete,  not  a  conditional  victory.  For  sure- 
ly those  who  are  without  mercy  themselves 
cannot  appreciate  and  do  not  deserve  mercy 
from  others.  To  our  way  of  thinking,  the  van- 
quished must  be  made  to  drink  the  cup  of  de- 
feat to  its  bitterest  lees,  not  because  of  any 
vengeful  desire  on  our  part  to  inflict  unneces- 
sary punishment  and  humiliation  upon  him, 
but  because  he  who  had  no  other  argument  than 
force,  can  be  cured  of  his  madness  only  by 
force.  We  who  have  seen  what  he  has  wrought 
by  the  work  of  his  hands  among  his  helpless 
victims  in  other  lands  believe  this  with  all  our 
hearts. 

7.  5.  C. 

New  York,  November,  1918. 


[xvi  ] 


CONTENTS 


CHAFTEB  PAGE 

I  When  the  Sea-Asp  Stings 21 

II  "AllAmueikin — Out  TO  THEM  Wires"   ...  35 

III  Hell's  Fire  for  the  Huns 58 

IV  On  the  Threshold  of  Battle 82 

V  Setting  a  Trap  for  Opportunity       ....  98 

VI  Through  the  Battle's  Front  Door  ....  102 

VII  At  the  Front  of  the  Front 114 

Vin  A  Bridge  and  an  Automobile  Tire    ....  129 

IX  Aces  Up! 139 

X  Happy  Landings 152 

XI  Trench  Essence 164 

XII  Being  Bombed  and  Re-Bombed 195 

XIII  London  Under  Raid-Punishment       ....  210 

XIV  The  Day  of  Big  Bertha 217 

XV  Wanted:  A  Fool-Proof  War 235 

XVI  Conducting  War  by  Delegation       ....  265 

XVII  Young  Black  Joe 270 

XVIII  "Let's  Go!" 298 

XIX  War  as  It  Isn't 308 

-     XX  The  Call  of  the  Cuckoo 330 

XXI  Paradoxes  Behind  the  Lines 345 

XXII  The  Tail  OF  THE  Snake 354 

XXIII  Bricks  Without  Straw 375 

XXIV  From  My  Overseas  Note-Book ^  398 

[xvii] 


THE  GLORY  OF  THE  COMING 


f  /  n  / 1 


CHAPTER  I 
WHEN  THE  SEA-ASP  STINGS 


E  CAUSE  she  was  camouflaged  with 
streaky  marks  and  mottHngs  into  the 
Hkeness  of  a  painted  Jezebel  of  the  seas, 
because  she  rode  high  out  of  the  water, 
and  wallowed  as  she  rode,  because  during  all 
those  days  of  our  crossing  she  hugged  up  close 
to  our  ship,  splashing  through  the  foam  of  our 
wake  as  though  craving  the  comfort  of  our 
company,  we  called  her  things  no  self-respect- 
ing ship  should  have  to  bear.  But  when  that 
night,  we  stood  on  the  afterdeck  of  our  ship, 
we  running  away  as  fast  as  our  kicking  screw 
would  take  us,  and  saw  her  going  down,  taking 
American  soldier  boys  to  death  with  her  in 
alien  waters,  we  drank  toasts  standing  up  to 
the  poor  old  Tuscania. 

I  was  one  of  those  who  were  in  at  the  death 
of  the  Tuscania.  Her  sinking  was  the  climax 
of  the  most  memorable  voyage  I  ever  expect 
to  take.  Five  days  have  elapsed  since  she  was 
torpedoed,  and  even  though  these  words  are 
being  cabled  across  from  London  to  the  home 

[21] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

side  of  the  ocean,  at  least  three  weeks  more 
must  elapse  before  they  can  see  printer's  ink. 
So  to  some  this  will  seem  an  old  story;  but 
the  memory  of  what  happened  that  night  off 
the  Irish  coast  is  going  to  abide  with  me  while 
I  live.  It  was  one  of  those  big  moments  in  a 
man's  life  that  stick  in  a  man's  brain  as  long 
as  he  has  a  brain  to  think  with. 

Transatlantic  journeys  these  days  aren't 
what  they  used  to  be  before  America  went 
into  the  war.  Ours  began  to  be  different  even 
before  our  ship  pulled  out  from  port.  It  is 
forbidden  me  now  to  tell  her  name,  and  anyhow 
her  name  doesn't  in  the  least  matter,  but  she 
was  a  big  ship  with  a  famous  skipper,  and  in 
peacetimes  her  sailing  would  have  made  some 
small  stir.  There  would  have  been  crowds  of 
relations  and  friends  at  the  pier  bidding  fare- 
well to  departing  travellers ;  and  steamer  baskets 
and  steamer  boxes  would  have  been  coming 
aboard  in  streams.  Beforehand  there  would 
have  been  a  pleasant  and  mildly  exciting 
bustle,  and  as  we  drew  away  from  the  dock 
and  headed  out  into  midstream  and  down  the 
river  for  our  long  hike  overseas,  the  pierhead 
would  have  been  alive  with  waving  handker- 
chiefs, and  all  our  decks  would  have  been 
fringed  with  voyagers  shouting  back  farewells 
to  those  they  had  left  behind  them.  Instead 
we  slipped  away  almost  as  if  we  had  done 
something  wrong.  There  was  no  waving  of 
hands  and  handkerchiefs,  no  good-byes  on  the 

[22  ] 


WHEN    THE    SEA-ASP    STINGS 

gang-planks,  no  rush  to  get  back  on  land  when 
the  shore  bell  sounded.  To  reach  the  dock  we 
passed  through  trochas  of  barbed-wire  en- 
tanglements, past  sentries  standing  with  fixed 
bayonets  at  en  try  ways.  When  we  got  inside 
the  pier  our  people  bade  us  farewell  at  a  guarded 
gate.  None  but  travellers  whose  passports 
read  straight  were  allowed  beyond  that  point. 
So  alone  and  unescorted  each  one  of  us  went 
soberly  up  the  side  of  the  ship,  and  then  sun- 
dry hours  later  our  journey  began,  as  the  ship, 
like  a  big  grey  ghost,  slid  away  from  land,  as 
quietly  as  might  be,  into  the  congenial  grey 
fog  which  instantly  swallowed  her  up  and  left 
her  in  a  little  grey  world  of  sea  mist  that  was 
all  her  own.  After  this  fashion,  then,  we 
started. 

As  for  the  first  legs  of  the  trip  they  were 
much  like  the  first  legs  of  almost  any  sea  trip 
except  that  we  travelled  in  a  convoy  with  sun- 
dry other  ships,  with  warcraft  to  guard  us  on 
our  way.  Our  ship  was  quite  full  of  soldiers — 
officers  in  the  first  cabin,  and  the  steerage 
packed  with  khakied  troopers — ninety  per  cent 
of  whom  had  never  smelled  bilge  water  before 
they  embarked  upon  their  great  adventure 
overseas.  There  were  fewer  civilians  than  one 
formerly  might  have  found  on  a  ship  bound 
for  Europe.  In  these  times  only  those  civilians 
who  have  urgent  business  in  foreign  climes 
venture  to  go  abroad. 

I  sat  at  the  purser's  table.     His  table  was 

[23] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

fairly  typical  of  the  ship's  personnel.  With 
me  there  sat,  of  course,  the  purser,  likewise 
two  Canadian  officers,  two  members  of  a 
British  Commission  returning  from  America, 
and  an  Irish  brewer.  There  were  not  very 
many  women  on  our  passenger  list.  Of  these 
women  half  a  dozen  or  so  were  professional 
nurses,  and  two  were  pretty  Canadian  girls 
bound  for  England  to  be  married  on  arrival 
there  to  young  Canadian  officers.  There  were 
only  three  children  on  board,  and  they  were 
travelling  with  their  parents  in  the  second 
class. 

Except  for  a  touch  of  seriousness  about  the 
daily  lifeboat  drill,  and  except  that  regimental 
discipline  went  forward,  with  the  troops  drill- 
ing on  the  open  deck  spaces  when  the  weather 
and  the  sea  permitted,  there  was  at  fi^st  noth- 
ing about  this  voyage  to  distinguish  it  from 
any  other  midwinter  voyage.  Strangers  got 
acquainted  one  with  another  and  swapped 
views  on  politics,  religion,  symptoms  and  Ger- 
mans; flirtations  started  and  ripened  furiously; 
concerts  were  organized  and  took  place,  proving 
to  be  what  concerts  at  sea  usually  are.  Twice 
a  day  the  regimental  band  played,  and  once  a 
day,  up  on  the  bridge,  the  second  officer  took 
the  sun,  squinting  into  his  sextant  with  the 
deep  absorption  with  which  in  happier  times  a 
certain  type  of  tourist  was  wont  to  stare  through 
an  enlarging  device  at  a  certain  type  of  Parisian 
photograph.    At  night,  though,  we  were  in  a 

[24] 


WHEN    THE    SEA-ASP    STINGS 

darkened  ship,  a  gliding  black  shape  upon 
black  waters,  with  heavy  shades  over  all  the 
portholes  and  thick  draperies  over  all  the 
doors,  and  only  dim  lights  burning  in  the 
passageways  and  cross  halls,  so  that  every  odd 
corner  on  deck  or  within  was  as  dark  as  a  coal 
pocket.  It  took  some  time  to  get  used  to  being 
in  the  state  in  which  Moses  was  when  the  light 
went  out;  but  then,  we  had  time  to  get  used 
to  it,  believe  me!  Ocean  travel  is  slower  these 
days,  for  obvious  reasons.  Personally,  I  re- 
tired from  the  ship's  society  during  three  days 
of  the  first  week  of  the  trip.  I  missed  only 
two  meals,  missing  them,  I  may  add,  shortly 
after  having  eaten  them;  but  at  the  same  time 
I  felt  safer  in  my  berth  than  up  on  deck — not 
happier,  particularly,  but  safer.  The  man  who 
first  said  that  you  can't  eat  your  cake  and 
have  it  too  had  such  cases  as  mine  in  mind,  I 
am  sure  of  that.  I  can't  and  I  don't — at  least 
not  when  I  am  taking  an  ocean  voyage.  I 
have  been  seasick  on  many  waters,  and  I  have 
never  learned  to  care  for  the  sensation  yet. 

When  I  emerged  from  semiretirement  it  was 
to  learn  that  we  had  reached  the  so-called  dan- 
ger zone.  The  escort  of  warcraft  for  our 
transport  had  been  augmented.  Under  orders 
the  military  men  wore  their  life  jackets,  and 
during  all  their  v/aking  hours  they  went  about 
with  cork  flaps  hugging  them  about  their 
necks  fore  and  aft,  so  that  they  rather  suggested 
Chinese  malefactors  with  their  heads  incased 

[25] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

in  punishment  casques.  By  request  the  civilian 
passengers  were  expected  to  carry  their  life 
preservers  with  them  wherever  they  went;  but 
some  of  them  forgot  the  injunction.  I  know  I 
did  frequently.  Also,  a  good  many  of  them 
turned  in  at  night  with  most  of  their  outer 
clothing  on  their  bodies;  but  I  followed  the  old 
Southern  custom  and  took  most  of  mine  off 
before  going  to  bed. 

Our  captain  no  longer  came  to  the  saloon 
for  his  meals.  He  lived  upon  the  bridge — ate 
there  and,  I  think,  slept  there  too — what 
sleeping  he  did.  Standing  there  all  muffled  in 
his  oilskins  he  looked  even  more  of  a  squatty 
and  unheroic  figure  than  he  had  in  his  naval 
blue  presiding  at  the  head  of  the  table;  but 
by  repute  we  knew  him  for  a  man  who  had 
gone  through  one  torpedoing  with  great  credit 
to  himself  and  through  numbers  of  narrow  es- 
capes, and  we  valued  him  accordingly  and  put 
our  faith  in  him.  It  was  faith  well  placed,  as 
shall  presently  transpire. 

I  should  not  say  that  there  was  much  fear 
aboard;  at  least  if  there  was  it  did  not  mani- 
fest itself  in  the  manner  or  the  voice  or  the 
behaviour  of  a  single  passenger  seen  by  me; 
but  there  was  a  sort  of  nagging,  persistent  sense 
of  uneasiness  betraying  itself  in  various  small 
ways.  For  one  thing,  all  of  us  made  more 
jokes  about  submarines,  mines  and  other  perils 
of  the  deep  than  was  natural.  There  was 
something  a  little  forced,  artificial,  about  this 

[26] 


WHEN    THE    SEA-ASP    STINGS 

gaiety — the  laughs   came   from    the    lips,   but 
not  from  points  farther  south. 

We  knew  by  hearsay  that  the  Tuscania  was 
a  troopship  bearing  some  of  our  soldiers  over 
to  do  their  share  of  the  job  of  again  making 
this  world  a  fit  place  for  human  beings  to  live 
in.  There  was  something  pathetic  in  the 
fashion  after  which  she  so  persistently  and 
constantly  strove  to  stick  as  closely  under  our 
stern  as  safety  and  the  big  waves  would  permit. 
It  was  as  though  her  skipper  placed  all  reliance 
in  our  skipper,  looking  to  him  to  lead  his  ship 
out  of  peril  should  peril  befall.  Therefore,  we 
of  our  little  group  watched  her  from  our  after- 
decks,  with  her  sharp  nose  forever  half  or 
wholly  buried  in  the  creaming  white  smother 
we  kicked  up  behind  us. 

It  was  a  crisp  bright  February  day  when  we 
neared  the  coasts  of  the  British  Empire.  At 
two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  we  passed,  some 
hundreds  of  yards  to  starboard,  a  round,  dark, 
bobbing  object  which  some  observers  thought 
was  a  floating  mine.  Others  thought  it  might 
be  the  head  and  shoulders  of  a  human  body 
held  upright  in  a  life  ring.  Whatever  it  was, 
our  ship  gave  it  a  wide  berth,  sheering  off 
from  the  object  in  a  sharp  swing.  Almost  at 
the  same  moment  upon  our  other  bow,  at  a 
distance  of  not  more  than  one  hundred  yards 
from  the  crooked  course  we  were  then  pur- 
suing, there  appeared  out  through  one  of  the 
swells  a  lifeboat,  oarless,  abandoned,  empty, 

[27] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

except  for  what  looked  like  a  woman's  cloak 
lying  across  the  thwarts.  Rising  and  falling  to 
the  swing  of  the  sea  it  drifted  down  alongside 
of  us  so  that  we  could  look  almost  straight 
down  into  it.  We  did  not  stop  to  investigate 
but  kept  going,  zigzagging  as  we  went,  and  that 
old  painted-up  copy  cat  of  a  Tuscayiia  came 
zigzagging  behind  us.  A  good  many  persons 
decided  to  tie  on  their  life  preservers. 

Winter  twilight  was  drawing  on  when  we 
sighted  land — Northern  Ireland  it  was.  The 
wind  was  going  down  wdth  the  sun  and  the 
sharp  crests  of  the  waves  were  dulling  off,  and 
blunt  oily  rollers  began  to  splash  with  greasy 
sounds  against  our  plates.  Far  away  some- 
where we  saw  the  revolving  light  of  a  light- 
house winking  across  the  face  of  the  waters 
like  a  drunken  eye.  That  little  beam  coming 
and  going  gave  me  a  feeling  of  security.  I 
was  one  of  a  party  of  six  who  went  below  to 
the  stateroom  of  a  member  of  the  group  for 
a  farewell  card  game. 

Perhaps  an  hour  later,  as  we  sat  there  each 
intently  engaged  upon  the  favoured  indoor 
American  sport  of  trying  to  better  two  pairs, 
we  heard  against  our  side  of  the  ship  a  queer 
knocking  sound  rapidly  repeated — a  sound 
that  somehow  suggested  a  boy  dragging  a 
stick  along  a  picket  fence. 

"I  suppose  that's  a  torpedo  rapping  for  admis- 
sion," said  one  of  us,  looking  up  from  his  cards 
and  listening  with  a  cheerful  grin  on  his  face. 

[28] 


WHEN    THE    SEA-ASP    STINGS 

I  think  it  was  not  more  than  five  minutes 
after  that  when  an  American  officer  opened  the 
stateroom  door  and  poked  his  head  in. 

"Better  come  along,  you  fellows,"  he  said; 
"but  come  quietly  so  as  not  to  give  alarm  or 
frighten  any  of  the  women.  Something  has 
happened.    It*s  the  Tuscania — she's  in  trouble !" 

Up  we  got  and  hurried  aft  down  the  decks, 
each  one  taking  with  him  his  cork  jacket  and 
adjusting  it  over  his  shoulders  as  he  went.  We 
came  to  the  edge  of  the  promenade  deck  aft. 
There  were  not  many  persons  there,  as  well 
as  we  could  tell  in  the  thick  darkness  through 
which  we  felt  our  way,  and  not  many  more 
came  afterward — in  all  I  should  say  not  more 
than  seventy-five. 

All  the  rest  were  in  ignorance  of  what  had 
occurred — a  good  many  were  at  dinner.  Ac- 
counts of  the  disaster  which  I  have  read  since 
my  arrival  in  London  said  that  the  torpedo 
from  the  U-boat  thudded  into  the  vitals  of  the 
Tuscania,  disarranged  her  engines,  and  left  her 
in  utter  darkness  for  a  while  until  her  crew 
could  switch  on  the  auxiliary  dynamo.  I  think 
this  must  have  been  a  mistake,  for  at  the 
moment  of  our  reaching  the  deck  of  our  ship 
the  Tuscania  was  lighted  up  all  over.  Her 
illumination  seemed  especially  brilliant,  but 
that,  I  suppose,  was  largely  because  we  had 
become  accustomed  to  seeing  our  fellow  trans- 
ports as  dark  bulks  at  night.  I  should  say  she 
was  not  more  than   a  mile  from   us,   almost 

[29] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

due  aft  and  a  trifle  to  the  left.  But  the  dis- 
tance between  us  visibly  increased  each  passing 
moment,  for  we  were  running  away  from  her 
as  fast  as  our  engines  could  drive  us.  We 
could  feel  our  ship  throb  under  our  feet  as  she 
picked  up  speed.  It  made  us  feel  like  cowards. 
Near  at  hand  a  ship  was  in  distress,  a  ship 
laden  with  a  precious  freightage  of  American 
soldier  boys,  and  here  were  we  legging  it  like 
a  frightened  rabbit,  w^eaving  in  and  out  on 
sharp  tacks. 

We  knew%  of  course,  that  we  were  under  or- 
ders to  get  safely  away  if  we  could  in  case  one 
of  those  sea  adders,  the  submarines,  should 
attack  our  convoy.  We  knew  that  guardian 
destroyers  would  even  now  be  hurrying  to  the 
rescue,  and  we  knew  land  was  not  many  miles 
away;  but  all  the  same,  I  think  I  never  felt 
such  an  object  of  shame  as  I  felt  that  first 
moment  when  the  realisation  dawned  on  me 
that  we  were  fleeing  from  a  stricken  vessel 
instead  of  hastening  back  to  give  what  succour 
we  could. 

As  I  stood  there  in  the  darkness,  with  silent, 
indistinct  shapes  all  about  me,  it  came  upon 
me  with  almost  the  shock  of  a  physical  blow 
that  the  rows  of  lights  I  saw  yonder  through 
the  murk  were  all  slanting  slightly  downward 
toward  what  would  be  the  bow  of  the  disabled 
steamer.  These  oblique  lines  of  light  told  the 
story.  The  Tuscania  had  been  struck  forward 
and  was  settling  by  the  head. 

[30] 


WHEN    THE    SEA-ASP    STINGS 

Suddenly  a  little  subdued  "Ah!  Ah!"  burst 
like  a  chorus  from  us  all.  A  red  rocket — a 
rocket  as  red  as  blood — sprang  up  high  into 
the  air  above  those  rows  of  lights.  It  hung 
aloft  for  a  moment,  then  burst  into  a  score 
of  red  balls,  which  fell,  dimming  out  as  they 
descended.  After  a  bit  two  more  rockets  fol- 
lowed in  rapid  succession.  I  always  thought 
a  rocket  to  be  a  beautiful  thing.  Probably 
this  belief  is  a  heritage  from  that  time  in  my 
boyhood  when  first  I  saw  Fourth-of-July  fire- 
works. But  never  again  will  a  red  rocket  fired 
at  night  be  to  me  anything  except  a  reminder 
of  the  most  pitiable,  the  most  heart-racking 
thing  I  have  ever  seen — that  poor  appeal  for 
help  from  the  sinking  Tuscania  flaming  against 
that  foreign  sky. 

There  was  silence  among  us  as  we  watched. 
None  of  us,  I  take  it,  had  words  within  him  to 
express  what  he  felt;  so  we  said  nothing  at  all, 
but  just  stared  out  across  the  waters  until  our 
eyeballs  ached  in  their  sockets.  So  quiet  were 
we  that  I  jumped  when  right  at  my  elbow  a 
low,  steady  voice  spoke.  Turning  my  head  I 
could  make  out  that  the  speaker  was  one  of 
the  younger  American  officers. 

"If  what  I  heard  before  we  sailed  is  true,"  he 
said,  "my  brother  is  in  the  outfit  on  that 
boat  yonder.  Well,  if  they  get  him  it  will 
only  add  a  little  more  interest  to  the  debt  I 
already  owe  those  damned  Germans." 

That  was  all  he  said,  and  to  it  I  made  no 

[31] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

answer,  for  there  was  no  answer  to  be  made. 

Fifteen  minutes  passed,  then  twenty,  then 
twenty-five.  Now  instead  of  many  small 
lights  we  could  make  out  only  a  few  faint  pin 
pricks  of  light  against  the  blackness  to  mark 
the  spot  where  the  foundering  vessel  must  be. 
Presently  we  could  distinguish  but  one  speck 
of  light.  Alongside  this  one  special  gleam  a 
red  glow  suddenly  appeared — not  a  rocket  this 
time,  but  a  flare,  undoubtedly.  Together  the 
two  lights — the  steady  white  one  and  the 
spreading  red  one — descended  and  together 
were  extinguished.  Without  being  told  we 
knew,  all  of  us — landsmen  and  seamen  alike — 
what  we  had  seen.  We  had  seen  the  last  of 
that  poor  ship,  stung  to  death  by  a  Hunnish 
sea-asp. 

Still  silent,  we  went  below.  Those  of  us 
who  had  not  yet  dined  went  and  dined.  Very 
solemnly,  like  men  performing  a  rite,  we  or- 
dered wine  and  we  drank  to  the  Tuscania  and 
her  British  crew  and  her  living  cargo  of  Amer- 
ican soldiers. 

Next  morning,  after  a  night  during  which 
perilous  things  happened  about  us  that  may 
not  be  described  here  and  now,  we  came  out 
of  our  perils  and  into  safety  at  an  English  port, 
and  there  it  was  that  we  heard  what  made  us 
ask  God  to  bless  that  valorous,  vigilant  little 
pot-bellied  skipper  of  ours,  may  he  live  for- 
ever! We  were  told  that  the  torpedo  which 
pierced  the  Tuscania  was  meant  for  us,  that 

[32] 


WHEN    THE    SEA-ASP    STINGS 

the  U-boat  rising  unseen  in  the  twiHght  fired 
it  at  US,  and  that  our  captain  up  on  the  bridge 
saw  it  coming  when  it  was  yet  some  way  off, 
and  swinging  the  ship  hard  over  to  one  side, 
dodged  the  flittering  devil-thing  by  a  margin 
that  can  be  measured  literally  in  inches.  The 
call  was  a  close  one.  The  torpedo,  it  was  said, 
actually  grazed  the  plates  of  our  vessel — it 
was  that  we  heard  as  we  sat  at  cards — and 
passing  aft  struck  the  bow  of  the  Tuscania  as 
she  swung  along  not  two  hundred  yards  be- 
hind us.  We  heard,  too,  that  twice  within  the 
next  hour  torpedoes  were  fired  at  us,  and  again 
a  fourth  one  early  in  the  hours  of  the  morning. 
Each  time  chance  or  poor  aim  or  sharp  sea- 
manship or  a  combination  of  all  three  saved 
us.  We  were  lucky.  For  of  the  twelve  ships 
in  our  transport  two,  including  the  Tuscania, 
were  destroyed  and  two  others,  making  four 
in  all,  were  damaged  by  torpedoes  before 
morning. 

Next  day,  in  London,  I  read  that  not  a  man 
aboard  the  Tuscania,  whether  sailor  or  soldier, 
showed  weakness  or  fright.  I  read  how  those 
Yankee  boys,  many  of  them  at  sea  for  the 
first  time  in  their  lives,  stood  in  ranks  waiting 
for  rescue  or  for  death  while  the  ship  listed  and 
yawed  and  settled  under  them;  how  the  British 
sang  **'God  Save  the  King,"  and  the  Americans 
sang  to  the  same  good  Allied  air,  "My  Country, 
'Tis  of  Thee;"  and  how  at  last,  descending  over 
the  side,  some  of  them  to  be  drowned  but  more 

[S3] 


ii 
ii 

ii  "XT 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

of  them  to  be  saved,  those  American  lads  of 
ours  sang  what  before  then  had  been  a  mean- 
ingless, trivial  jingle,  but  which  is  destined 
forevermore,  I  think,  to  mean  a  great  deal  to 
Americans.  Perry  said:  "We  have  met  the 
enemy,  and  they  are  ours."  Lawrence  said: 
Don't  give  up  the  ship!"  Farragut  said: 
Damn  the  torpedoes,  go  ahead."  Dewey  said: 
You  may  fire,  Gridley,  when  you  are  ready." 
Our  history  is  full  of  splendid  sea  slogans,  but 
I  think  there  can  never  be  a  more  splendid  one 
that  we  Americans  will  cherish  than  the  first 
line,  which  is  also  the  title  of  the  song  now 
suddenly  freighted  with  a  meaning  and  a  mes- 
sage to  American  hearts,  which  our  boys  sang 
that  black  February  night  in  the  Irish  Sea 
when  two  hundred  of  them,  first  fruits  of  our 
national  sacrifice  in  this  war,  went  over  the 
sides  of  the  Tuscania  to  death:  "Where  do  we 
go  from  here,  boys;  where  do  we  go  from  here.^^" 


[34] 


CHAPTER  II 

"ALL   AMURIKIN— OUT   TO   THEM 

WIRES" 


HE  was  curled  up  in  a  moist-mud 
cozy  corner.  His  curved  back  fitted 
into  a  depression  in  the  clay.  His 
feet  rested  comfortably  in  an  ankle- 
deep  solution,  very  puttylike  in  its  consistency, 
and  compounded  of  the  rains  of  heaven  and  the 
alluvials  of  France.  His  face  was  incredibly 
dirty,  and  the  same  might  have  been  said  for 
his  hands.  He  had  big  buck  teeth  and  sandy 
hair  and  a  nice  round  inquisitive  blue  eye. 
His  rifle,  in  good  order,  was  balanced  across 
his  hunched  knees.  One  end  of  a  cigarette 
was  pasted  fast  to  his  lower  lip;  the  other  end 
spilled  tiny  sparks  down  the  front  of  his 
blouse. 

Offhand  you  would  figure  his  age  to  be  half- 
past  nineteen.  Just  round  the  corner  from 
him  a  machine  gun  at  intervals  spoke  in  stut- 
tering accents.  At  more  frequent  intervals 
from  somewhere  up  or  down  the  line  a  rifle 
whanged  where  an  ambitious  amateur  Yankee 

[35] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


sniper  tried  for  a  professional  and  doubtlessly 
a  bored  German  sniper  across  the  way;  or  where 
the  German  tried  back. 

The  youth  in  the  cozy  corner  paid  small  heed. 
He  was  supposed  to  be  getting  his  baptism  of 
fire.  In  reality  he  was  reading  a  two-months- 
old  copy  of  a  certain  daily  paper  printed  in  a 
certain  small  city  in  a  certain  jNliddle  Western 
state — to  wit,  the  sovereign  state  of  Ohio.  He 
belonged  to  a  volunteer  regiment,  and  in  a  larger 
sense  to  the  Rainbow  Division.  This  was  his 
first  day  in  the  front-line  trenches  and  already 
he  was  as  much  at  home  there  as  though  he 
had  been  cradled  to  the  lullaby  of  those  big 
guns  grunting  away  in  the  distance.  For  a 
fact  he  was  at  home — reading  home  news  out 
of  the  home  paper  and,  as  one  might  say,  not 
caring  a  single  dern  whatsoever. 

"Say,  Tobe,"  he  called  in  the  husky  half 
voice  which  is  the  prescribed  and  conventional 
conversational  tone  on  the  forward  edges  of 
No  Man's  Land;  *'Tobe,  lissen!" 

His  mate,  leaning  against  the  slanted  side 
of  the  trench  ten  feet  away,  blowing  little 
smoke  wisps  up  toward  the  pale-blue  sky  above 
him,  half  turned  his  head  to  answer. 

"Well,  what .P" 

"Whatter  you  know  about  this.?  It  says 
here  the  New  York  Yanks  is  liable  to  buy  Ty 
Cobb  off  of  Detroit.  Say,  what'll  them  Detroits 
do  without  old  Ty  in  there  bustin'  the  fast  ones 
on  the  nose,  huh.'^" 

[36] 


ALL    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES 


"With  all  the  money  they'll  get  for  that  guy 
they  should  worry!" 

The  emphatic  ker-blim  of  a  rifle  a  hundred 
yards  off  furnished  a  vocal  exclamation  point 
to  further  accent  the  comment. 

The  reader  shifted  himself  slightly  in  his 
scooped  niche  and  turned  over  to  another 
page.  He  was  just  the  average  kid  private, 
but  to  me  he  was  as  typical  as  type  can  be. 
I  figured  him  as  a  somewhat  primitive,  highly 
elemental  creature,  adaptable  and  simple- 
minded;  appallingly  green  yet  at  this  present 
trade,  capable  though  of  becoming  amazingly 
competent  at  it  if  given  experience  and  a 
chance;  temperamentally  gaited  to  do  heroic 
things  without  any  of  the  theatricalism  of 
planned  heroics — in  short  and  in  fine,  the  in- 
carnated youthful  spirit  of  the  youthful  land 
which  bore  him. 

I  came  upon  him  with  his  cigarette  and  his 
favourite  daily  and  his  mud-boltered  feet  at 
the  tail  end  of  a  trip  along  the  front  line  of  a 
segment  of  a  sector  held  by  our  troops,  and 
before  I  made  his  acquaintance  sundry  things 
befel.  I  had  been  in  trenches  before,  but  they 
were  German  trenches  along  the  Aisne  in  the 
fall  of  the  first  year  of  this  war  business,  and 
these  trenches  of  our  own  people  were  quite 
different  from  those  of  1914.  French  minds 
had  devised  them,  with  their  queer  twists  and 
windings,  which  seem  so  crazy  and  yet  are  so 
sanely  ordained;  and  French  hands  had  dug 

[37] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

them  out  of  the  chalky  soil  and  shored  them 
up  with  timbers,  but  now  Americans  had  taken 
them  over  and,  in  common  with  all  things 
that  Americans  take  over,  they  had  become  as 
much  and  as  thoroughly  American  as  though 
they  had  been  Subway  diggings  in  New  York 
City,  which  indeed  they  rather  resembled;  or 
excavations  for  the  foundations  of  the  new 
Carnegie  Library  in  Gallipolis.  'Tis  a  way  our 
folks  have.  It  may  be  a  good  way  or  a  bad 
way — since  I  came  over  here  I  think  the 
French  neither  understand  it  nor  care  deeply 
for  it — but  all  the  same  it  is  our  way. 

At  the  beginning  we  quit  a  wrecked  town  that 
was  a  regimental  headquarters.  Its  present 
population  was  all  military,  French  and  Amer- 
ican. The  villagers  who  had  once  lived  there 
were  gone  to  the  last  one  of  them,  and  had  been 
gone  for  years  probably.  But  more  than  by  the 
shattered  stone  walls,  or  by  the  breached  and 
empty  church  with  its  spire  shorn  away,  or  by 
the  tiled  roofs  which  were  roofs  no  longer  but 
sieves  and  colanders,  its  altered  character  was 
set  forth  and  proved  by  the  absence  of  any 
manure  heaps  against  the  house  fronts.  In 
this  part  of  the  world  communal  prosperity  is 
measured,  I  think,  by  the  size  and  richness  of 
the  manure  heap.  It  is  kept  alongside  the 
homes  and  daily  it  is  turned  over  with  spades 
and  tormented  with  pitchforks,  against  the  time 
when  it  is  carried  forth  to  be  spread  upon  the 
tiny  farm  a  mile  or  so  away.    The  rank  ammo- 

[38] 


"all   AMURIKIN OUT   TO    THEM    WIRES   ' 

niacal  smell  of  the  precious  fertilizer  which 
keeps  the  land  rich  is  the  surest  information 
to  the  nose  of  the  approaching  traveller  that 
thrifty  folk  abide  in  the  hamlet  he  is  about 
entering. 

But  this  town  smelled  only  of  dust  and 
decay  and  the  peculiar  odour  of  rough-cast 
plastering  which  has  been  churned  by  wheels 
and  hoofs  and  feet  into  a  fine  white  silt  like 
powdered  pumice,  coating  everything  and  every- 
body in  sight  when  the  weather  is  dry,  and  when 
the  weather  is  wet  turning  into  a  slick  and  slimy 
paste  underfoot. 

We  came  out  of  a  colonel's  billet  in  a  narrow- 
shouldered  old  two-story  house,  my  companion 
and  I;  and  crossing  the  little  square  we  passed 
through  what  once  upon  a  time  had  been  the 
front  wall  of  the  principal  building  in  the 
place.  The  front  wall  still  stood  and  the  door- 
way was  unscarred,  but  both  were  like  parts 
of  stage  settings,  for  beyond  them  was  nothing 
at  all  save  nothingness — messed-about  heaps  of 
crumbled  masonry  and  broken  shards  of  tiling. 
From  the  inner  side  one  might  look  through 
the  doorway,  as  though  it  had  been  a  frame 
for  a  picture,  and  see  a  fine  scape  beyond  of 
marshland  and  winding  road  and  mounting 
hills  with  pine  trees  growing  in  isolated  groups 
like  the  dumpings  in  a  gentleman's  park. 

In  what  had  been  the  garden  behind  the 
principal  house  the  colonel's  automobile  was 
waiting.    We  climbed  into  it  and  rode  for  up- 

[39] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

ward  of  a  mile  along  a  seamed  and  rutted 
highway  that  wound  up  and  over  the  abbre- 
viated mountain  of  which  we  held  one  side  and 
the  Germans  the  other.  For  the  preceding 
three  days  there  had  been  a  faint  smell  of 
spring  in  the  air;  now  there  was  a  taste  of  it. 
One  might  say  that  spring  no  longer  was  coming 
but  had  actually  come.  The  rushes  which 
grew  in  low  places  were  showing  green  near 
their  roots  and  the  switchy  limbs  of  the  pollard 
willows  bore  successions  of  tiny  green  buds 
along  their  lengths.  Also  many  birds  were 
about.  There  w^ere  flocks  of  big  corbie  crows 
in  their  prim  notarial  black.  Piebald  French 
magpies  were  flickering  along  ahead  of  us,  al- 
ways in  pairs,  and  numbers  of  a  small  starling- 
like bird,  very  much  like  our  field  lark  in  look 
and  habit,  whose  throat  is  yellowish  and 
tawny  without  and  lined  with  pure  gold  within, 
were  singing  their  mating  songs.  Bursts  of 
amorous  pipings  came  from  every  side,  and  as 
the  male  birds  mounted  in  the  air  their  breast 
feathers  shone  in  the  clear  soft  afternoon  sun- 
shine like  patches  of  burnished  copper. 

Undoubtedly  spring  was  at  hand — the  spring 
which  elsew^here,  in  the  more  favoured  parts  of 
this  planet,  meant  reawakening  life  and  fecund- 
ity, but  which  here  meant  only  opportunity 
for  renewed  offensives  and  for  more  massacres, 
more  suffering,  more  wastings  of  life  and 
wealth  and  of  all  the  manifold  gifts  of  Nature. 
The  constant  sound  of  guns  on  ahead  of  us 

[40] 


''all   AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES" 

somewhere  made  one  think  of  a  half-dormant 
giant  grunting  as  he  roused.  Indeed  it  was  what 
it  seemed — War  emerging  from  his  hibernation 
and  waking  up  to  kill  again.  But  little  more 
than  a  year  before  it  had  been  their  war;  now 
it  was  our  war  too,  and  the  realisation  of  this 
difference  invested  the  whole  thing  for  us  with 
a  deeper  meaning.  No  longer  were  we  onlookers 
but  part  proprietors  in  the  grimmest,  ghastliest 
proceeding  that  ever  was  since  conscious  time 
began.  ^ 

We  whizzed  along  the  road  for  the  better  part 
of  a  mile,  part  of  the  time  through  dips,  the 
contour  of  which  kept  us  hidden  from  spying 
eyes  in  the  hostile  observation  pits  across  the 
ridge  to  the  eastward,  and  part  of  the  time 
upon  the  backbone  of  this  Vosges  foothill. 
These  latter  places  were  shielded  on  their  dan- 
gerous side  by  screens  of  marsh  grasses  woven 
in  huge  sheets  ten  feet  high  and  swinging  be- 
tween tall  poles  set  at  six-yard  intervals. 
There  were  rips  and  tears  in  these  rude  valances 
to  show  where  chance  shots  from  German  guns 
had  registered  during  the  preceding  few  days 
of  desultory  artillery  fire. 

On  the  way  we  passed  one  full  company  of 
French  infantry  coming  out  of  the  front  line 
for  rest,  and  one  contingent  of  our  own  sol- 
diers. The  Frenchmen  were  hampered,  as 
French  foot  soldiers  on  the  move  always  are, 
by  enormous  burdens  draped  upon  them, 
back,  flank  and  front;  and  under  the  dirt  and 

[41] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

dust  their  faces  wore  weary  drawn  lines.  Laden 
like  sumpter  mules,  they  went  by  us  at  the 
heavy  plodding  gait  of  their  kind,  which  is  so 
different  from  the  swaggering,  swinging  route 
step  of  the  Yankee,  and  so  different  from  the 
brisk  clip  at  which  the  Britisher  travels,  even 
in  heavy-marching  order,  but  which  all  the 
same  eats  up  the  furlongs  mighty  fast. 

The  Americans  were  grouped  on  a  little  green 
breast  of  sod.  At  the  peak  of  the  small  rounded 
elevation  was  a  smaller  terrace  like  a  nipple,  and 
from  this  rose  one  of  those  stone  shrines  so 
common  in  this  corner  of  Europe — a  stone  base 
with  a  rusted  iron  cross  bearing  a  figure  of  the 
Christ  above  it.  There  were  a  dozen  or  more 
of  our  boys  lying  or  squatted  here  resting. 

We  came  to  a  battalion  headquarters,  which 
seemed  rather  a  high-sounding  name  for  a  col- 
lection of  thatched  dugouts  under  a  bank. 
Here  leaving  the  car  we  were  turned  over  to  a 
young  intelligence  officer,  who  agreed  to  pilot 
us  through  certain  front-line  defences,  which  our 
people  only  two  days  before  had  taken  over 
from  the  French.  But  before  we  started  each 
of  us  put  on  his  iron  helmet,  which,  next  only 
to  the  derby  hat  of  commerce,  is  the  homeliest 
and  the  most  uncomfortable  design  ever  fash- 
ioned for  wear  in  connection  with  the  human 
head;  and  each  one  of  us  hung  upon  his  breast, 
like  a  palmer's  packet,  his  gas  mask,  inclosed 
in  its  square  canvas  case. 

Single  file  then  the  three  of  us  proceeded 

[42] 


"all    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES" 

along  a  footpath  that  was  dry  where  the  sun 
had  reached  it  and  shmy  with  mud  where  it 
had  lain  in  shadow,  until  we  passed  under  an 
arbour  of  withered  boughs  and  found  ourselves 
in  the  mouth  of  the  communication  trench.  It 
was  wide  enough  in  some  places  for  two  men 
to  pass  each  other  by  scrouging,  and  in  other 
places  so  narrow  that  a  full-sized  man  bearing 
his  accoutrements  could  barely  wriggle  his  way 
through.  Its  sides  were  formed  sometimes  of 
shored  planking  set  on  end,  but  more  often 
of  withes  cunningly  wattled  together.  It  is 
wonderful  what  a  smooth  fabric  a  French 
peasant  can  make  with  no  material  save  bundles 
of  pliant  twigs  and  no  tools  save  his  two  hands. 
Countless  miles  of  trenches  are  lined  with  this 
osier  work.  Some  of  it  has  been  there  for 
years,  but  except  where  a  shell  strikes  it  stays 
put. 

In  depth  the  trench  ranged  from  eight  feet 
to  less  than  six.  In  the  deeper  places  we 
marched  at  ease,  but  in  the  shallow  ones  we 
went  forward  at  a  crouch,  for  if  we  had  stood 
erect  here  our  heads  would  have  made  fair 
targets  for  the  enemy,  who  nowhere  was  more 
than  a  mile  distant,  and  who  generally  was 
very  much  closer.  Sometimes  we  trod  on 
duck  boards"  as  the  Americans  call  them,  or 
bath  mats"  in  the  Britisher's  vernacular, 
laid  end  to  end.  A  duck  board  is  fabricated 
by  putting  down  two  scantlings  parallel  and 
eighteen  inches  apart  and  effecting  a  permanent 

[43] 


Si 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


union  between  them  by  means  of  many  cross 
strips  of  wood  securely  nailed  on,  with  narrow 
spaces  between  the  strips  so  that  the  foothold 
is  securer  upon  these  corrugations  than  it  would 
be  on  an  uninterrupted  expanse.  It  somewhat 
resembles  the  runway  by  which  ducks  advance 
from  their  duck  pond  up  a  steep  bank;  hence 
one  of  its  names.  It  looks  rather  less  the 
other  thing  for  which  it  is  named. 

The  duck  board  makes  the  going  easier  in 
miry  places  but  it  is  a  treacherous  friend. 
Where  it  is  not  firmly  imbedded  fore  and  aft 
in  the  mud  the  far  end  of  it  has  an  unpleasant 
habit,  when  you  tread  with  all  your  weight  on 
the  near  end,  of  rising  up  and  grievously  smit- 
ing you  as  you  pitch  forward  on  your  face. 
Likewise  when  you  are  in  a  hurry  it  dearly 
loves  to  teeter  and  slip  and  slosh  round.  How- 
ever, to  date  no  substitute  for  it  has  been 
found.  Probably  enough  duck  boards  are  in 
use  on  all  the  Fronts,  in  trenches  and  out  of 
them,  to  make  a  board  walk  clear  across  our 
own  continent.  Beyond  Ypres,  where  the 
British  and  Belgians  are,  I  saw  miles  and  miles 
of  them  the  other  day. 

Here  in  Eastern  France  we  sometimes  footed 
it  along  these  duck  boards,  but  more  often  we 
dragged  our  feet  in  mud — sticky,  clinging,  af- 
fectionate 3^ellowish-grey  mud — which  came  up 
to  the  latchets  of  our  boots  and  made  each 
rod  of  progress  a  succession  of  violent  struggles. 
It  was  through  this  muck,  along  the  narrow 

[  44  ] 


''all    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES" 

twistywise  passage,  that  food  and  munitions 
must  be  carried  up  to  the  front  Hues  and  the 
wounded  must  be  carried  back.  Traversing 
it,  men,  as  we  saw,  speedily  became  mired  to 
the  hair  roots,  and  wearied  beyond  descrip- 
tion. Now  then,  magnify  and  multiply  by  ten 
the  conditions  as  we  found  them  on  this  day 
after  nearly  a  week  of  fair  weather  and  you 
begin  to  have  a  faint  and  shadowy  conception 
of  trench  conditions  in  the  height  of  the  rainy 
season  in  midwinter,  when  strong  men  grow 
so  tired  that  they  drop  down  and  drown  in  the 
semiliquid  streams. 

The  duck  board  is  hard  on  human  shins  and 
human  patience  but  it  saves  life  and  it  saves 
time,  which  in  war  very  frequently  is  more 
valuable  than  lives.  It  was  the  duck  board, 
as  much  as  the  rifle  and  the  big  gun,  which  en- 
abled the  Canadians  to  win  at  Passchendaele 
last  November.  With  its  aid  they  laid  a  wooden 
pathway  to  victory  across  one  of  the  most 
hideous  loblollies  in  the  flooded  quagmires  of 
Flanders.  Somebody  will  yet  write  a  tribute 
to  the  duck  board,  which  now  gets  only  curses 
and  abuse. 

We  had  come  almost  to  the  cross  trench, 
meeting  few  soldiers  on  the  way,  when  a  sud- 
den commotion  overhead  made  us  squat  low  and 
crane  our  necks.  Almost  above  us  a  boche 
aeroplane  was  circling  about  droning  like  all  the 
bees  in  the  world.  As  we  looked  the  anti- 
aircraft guns,   concealed  all  about  us,   began 

[45] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

B^^^iB^i^ia^^^^-^a>— >^^^^^^^>^^^^^^— i^^^^^^^^^^^— ^s^^^^^^^i^— ■•^i^^^^^^aii^^ 

firing  at  it.  Downy  dainty  pompons  of  smoke 
burst  out  in  the  heavens  below  it  and  above  it 
and  all  about  it. 

As  it  fled  back,  seemingly  uninjured,  out  of 
the  danger  zone  I  was  reminded  of  the  last 
time  before  this  when  I  had  seen  such  a  sight 
from  just  such  a  vantage  place.  But  then  the 
scene  had  been  the  plateau  before  Laon  in  the 
fall  of  1914j  and  then  the  sky  spy  had  been  a 
Frenchman  and  then  the  guns  which  chased 
him  away  had  been  German  guns  and  for  com- 
panion I  had  a  German  Staff-officer. 

We  went  on,  and  round  the  next  turn  en- 
countered half  a  dozen  youngsters  in  khaki, 
faced  with  mud  stripings,  who  barely  had 
paused  in  whatever  they  were  doing  to  watch 
the  brief  aerial  bombardment.  New  as  they 
were  to  this  game  they  already  were  accus- 
tomed to  the  sight  of  air  fighting.  Half  a  dozen 
times  a  day  or  oftener  merely  by  turning  their 
faces  upward  they  might  see  the  hostile  raider 
being  harried  back  to  its  hangar  by  defending 
cannon  or  by  French  planes  or  by  both  at  once. 
Later  that  same  day  we  were  to  see  a  German 
plane  stricken  in  its  flight  by  a  well-placed  shot 
from  an  American  battery.  We  saw  how  on  the 
instant,  like  a  duck  shot  on  the  wing,  it  changed 
from  a  living,  sentient,  perfectly  controlled 
mechanism  into  a  dishevelled,  wounded  thing, 
and  how  it  went  swirling  in  crazy  disorganised 
spirals  down  inside  its  own  lines. 

For  the  trip  through  the  cross  trenches  which 

[  46  ] 


''all    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES" 

marked  the  forward  angle  of  our  defences  we 
were  joined  by  a  second  chaperon  in  the  person 
of  an  infantry  captain — a  man  of  German  birth 
and  German  name,  born  in  Cologne  and 
brought  to  America  as  a  child,  who  at  the  age 
of  forty -three  had  given  up  a  paying  business 
and  left  a  family  to  volunteer  for  this  business, 
and  who  in  all  respects  was  just  as  good  an 
American  as  you  or  I,  reader,  can  ever  hope 
to  be.  It  was  his  company  that  held  the 
trenches  for  the  time,  and  he  volunteered  to 
let  us  see  what  they  were  doing. 

The  physical  things  he  showed  us  are  by 
now  old  stories  to  Americans.  Reading  de- 
scriptions of  them  would  be  stale  business  for 
people  at  home  who  read  magazines — the  little 
dirt  burrows  roofed  with  withes  and  leaves, 
where  machine  guns'  crews  squatted  behind 
guns  whose  muzzles  aimed  out  across  the  de- 
batable territory;  the  observation  posts,  where 
the  lads  on  duty  grumbled  at  the  narrow  range 
of  vision  provided  by  the  periscopes  and  much 
preferred  to  risk  their  lives  peeping  over  the 
parapets;  the  tiny  rifle  pits,  each  harbouring  a 
couple  of  youngsters;  the  gun  steps,  or  scarps, 
on  which  men  squatted  to  do  sniper  work  and 
to  try  for  hostile  snipers  across  the  way;  the 
niches  in  the  trench  sides,  where  hand  gre- 
nades— French  and  British  models — lay  in 
handy  reach  in  case  of  a  surprise  attack;  the 
stacks  of  rifle  and  machine-gun  cartridges  in 
their  appointed  places  all  along  the  inner  sides 

[47] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

of  the  low  dirt  parapets;  the  burrows,  like  the 
overgrown  nests  of  bank  martins,  into  which 
tired  men  might  crawl  to  steal  a  bit  of  rest; 
the  panels  of  thickly  meshed  barbed  wire  on 
light  but  strong  metal  frames  so  disposed  that 
they  might  with  instantaneous  dispatch  be 
thrust  into  place  to  block  the  way  of  invading 
raiders  following  along  behind  retreating  de- 
fenders; the  wire  snares  for  the  foes'  feet,  which 
might  be  dropped  in  the  narrow  footway  after 
the  retiring  force  had  passed;  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  paraphernalia  of  trench  warfare  which 
the  last  three  years  and  a  half  have  produced. 

Anyhow  it  was  not  these  things  that  inter- 
ested us;  rather  was  it  the  bearing  of  our  men, 
accustoming  themselves  to  new  duties  in  new 
surroundings;  facing  greater  responsibilities 
than  any  of  them  perhaps  had  ever  faced  before 
in  his  days,  amid  an  environment  fraught  with 
acute  personal  peril.  And  studying  them  I 
was  prouder  than  ever  of  the  land  that  bore 
them  and  sundry  millions  of  others  like  unto 
them. 

We  halted  at  a  spot  where  the  trench  was 
broken  in  somewhat  and  where  the  fresh  new 
clods  upon  the  dirt  shelf  halfway  up  it  were  all 
stained  a  strange,  poisonous  green  colour.  The 
afternoon  before  a  shell  had  dropped  there, 
killing  one  American  and  wounding  four  others. 
It  was  the  fumes  of  the  explosive  which  had 
corroded  the  earth  to  make  it  bear  so  curious 
a  tint.     This  company  then  had  had  its  first 

[48] 


"all    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES" 

fatality  under  fire;  its  men  had  undergone  the 
shock  of  seeing  one  of  their  comrades  converted 
into  a  mangled  fragment  of  a  man,  but  they 
bore  themselves  as  though  they  had  been 
veterans. 

In  but  one  thing  did  they  betray  themselves 
as  green  hands,  and  this  was  in  a  common  de- 
sire to  expose  themselves  unnecessarily.  As 
we  went  along  their  captain  was  constantly 
chiding  them  for  poking  their  tin-hatted  heads 
over  the  top,  in  the  hope  of  spying  out  the 
German  sharpshooters  who  continually  shot 
in  their  direction  from  the  coverts  of  a  pine 
thicket,  when  they  might  have  seen  just  as 
well  through  cunningly  devised  peepholes  in 
the  rifle  pits. 

"I  know  you  aren't  afraid,"  he  said  to  two 
especially  daring  youngsters,  "but  the  man  who 
gets  himself  killed  in  this  war  without  a  reason 
for  it  is  not  a  hero;  he's  just  a  plain  damned 
fool,  remember  that." 

Passing  the  spot  where  the  soft  damp  loam 
was  harried  and  the  crumbs  of  it  all  dyed  that 
diabolical  greenish  hue,  I  thought  of  a  tale  I 
had  heard  only  the  day  before  from  a  young 
Englishman  who,  having  won  his  captaincy  by 
two  years  of  hard  service,  had  then  promptly 
secured  a  tranfer  to  the  flying  corps,  where, 
as  he  innocently  put  it,  "there  was  a  chance  o' 
having  a  bit  of  real  fun,"  and  who  now  wore 
the  single  wing  of  an  observer  upon  the  left 
breast  of  his  tunic.    I  had  asked  him  what  was 

[49] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

the  most  dramatic  thing  he  personally  had  wit- 
nessed in  this  war,  thinking  to  hear  some  tales 
of  air  craftsmanship.  He  considered  for  a  mo- 
ment with  his  brow  puckered  in  a  conscientious 
effort  to  remember,  and  then  he  said: 

"I  think  perhaps  'twas  something  that  hap- 
pened last  spring,  just  before  I  got  out  of  the 
infantry  into  this  bally  outfit.  My  company 
had  been  in  the  trenches  two  days  and  nights, 
and  had  been  rather  knocked  about.  Really 
the  place  we  were  in  was  quite  a  bit  exposed, 
you  know,  and  after  we  had  had  rather  an  un- 
happy time  of  it  we  got  orders  to  pull  out. 
Just  as  the  order  reached  us  along  came  a 
whiz-bang  and  burst.  It  killed  one  of  my 
chaps  dead,  and  half  a  minute  later  another 
shell  dropped  in  the  same  place  and  covered 
him  under  tons  and  tons  of  earth,  all  except 
his  right  hand,  which  stuck  out  of  the  dirt. 
Quite  a  decent  sort  he  was  too — a  good  fighter 
and  cheerful  and  all  that  sort  of  thing;  very 
well  liked,  he  was.  There  was  no  time  to  dig 
him  out  even  if  we  had  been  able  to  carrv  his 
body  away  with  us;  we  had  to  leave  him  right 
there.  So  as  the  first  man  passed  by  where  he 
was  buried  he  bent  over  and  took  the  dead 
hand  in  his  hand  and  shook  it  and  said  'Good- 
bye, old  one!'  like  that.  All  the  men  followed 
the  example.  Each  one  of  us,  officers  included, 
shook  the  dead  hand  and  said  good-bye  to  the 
dead  man;  and  this  was  the  last  we  ever  saw 
of  him,  or  of  that  rotten  old  trench,  either." 

[50] 


*'ALL    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES 

As  nonchalantly  as  though  he  had  been  a 
paid  postman  going  through  a  quiet  street  a 
volunteer  mail  distributor  came  along  putting 
letters,  papers  and  small  mail  parcels  from  the 
States  into  soiled  eager  hands.  Each  man, 
taking  over  what  was  given  him,  would  prompt- 
ly hunker  down  in  some  convenient  cranny  to 
read  the  news  from  home;  news  which  was 
months  old  already.  I  saw  one,  a  broad-faced, 
pale-haired  youth,  reading  a  Slavic  paper;  and 
another,  a -{corporal,  reading  one  that  was 
printed  in  Italian.  The  other  papers  I  noted 
were  all  printed  in  English. 

It  was  from  a  begrimed  and  bespattered 
youngster  who  had  got  a  paper  printed  in 
English  that  I  heard  the  news  about  Ty  Cobb; 
and  when  you  appraised  the  character  of  the 
boy  and  his  comrades  a  mud-lined  hole  in  the 
ground  in  Eastern  France,  where  a  machine 
gun  stammered  round  the  corner  and  the  snipers 
sniped  away  to  the  right  of  him  and  the  left  of 
him,  seemed  a  perfectly  natural  place  for  the 
discussion  of  great  tidings  in  baseball.  If  he 
had  undertaken  to  discourse  upon  war  or  Ger- 
mans I  should  have  felt  disappointed  in  him, 
because  on  his  part  it  would  not  have  been 
natural;  and  if  he  was  anything  at  all  he  was 
natural. 

At  the  end  of  perhaps  a  mile  of  windings 
about  in  torturous  going  we,  following  after 
our  guides,  turned  into  a  shallower  side  trench 
which  debouched  off  the  main  workings.   Going 

[51] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

almost  upon  all  fours  for  about  sixty  or  sev- 
enty yards  we  found  ourselves  in  a  blind  ending. 
Here  was  a  tiny  ambuscade  roofed  over  with 
sod  and  camouflaged  on  its  one  side  with  dead 
herbage,  wherein  two  soldiers  crouched.  By  a 
husky  whisper  floating  back  to  us  over  the 
shoulder  of  the  captain  we  learned  that  this 
was  the  most  advanced  of  our  listening  posts. 
Having  told  us  this  he  extended  an  invitation, 
which  I  accepted;  and  as  he  flattened  back 
against  the  earth  making  himself  small  I  wrig- 
gled past  him  and  crawled  into  place  to  join 
its  two  silent  occupants. 

One  of  them  nudging  me  in  the  side  raised 
a  'finger  and  aimed  it  through  a  tiny  peephole 
in  the  screening  of  dead  bough  and  grasses. 
I  looked  where  he  pointed  and  this  was  what  I 
saw: 

At  the  level  of  my  eyes  the  earth  ran  away 
at  a  gentle  slope  for  a  bit  and  then  just  as  it 
reached  a  thicket  of  scrub  pines,  possibly  two 
hundred  feet  away,  rose  sharply.  Directly  in 
front  of  me  was  our  ow^n  tangle  of  rusted  barbed 
wire.  On  beyond  it,  perhaps  a  hundred  and 
sixty  feet  distant,  where  the  rise  began,  was 
a  second  line  of  wire,  and  that  was  German  wire, 
as  I  guessed  without  being  told.  In  between, 
the  soil  was  all  harrowed  and  upturned  into 
great  cusps  as  though  many  swine  had  been 
rooting  there  for  mast.  A  few  straggly  bushes 
still  adhered  to  the  sides  of  the  shell  holes,  and 
the  patches  of  grass  upon  the  tortured  sward 

[52] 


**ALL    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES" 

displayed  a  greenish  tinge  where  the  saps  of 
spring  were  beginning  to  rise  from  the  roots. 

Not  far  away  and  almost  directly  in  front  of 
me  one  of  those  yellow-breasted  starling  birds 
was  trying  his  song  with  considerable  success. 

"How  far  away  are  they.'^"  I  inquired  in 
the  softest  possible  of  whispers  of  the  nearer- 
most  of  the  hole's  tenants. 

"Right  there  in  those  little  trees,"  he  an- 
swered. "I  ain't  never  been  able  to  see  any  of 
them — they're  purty  smart  about  keepin'  them- 
selves out  of  sight — but  there's  times,  'specially 
toward  night,  when  we  kin  hear  'em  plain 
enough  talking  amongst  themselves  and  movin' 
round  over  there.  It's  quiet  as  a  graveyard 
now,  but  for  a  while  this  mornin'  one  of  their 
sharpshooters  got  busy  right  over  there  in  front 
of  where  you're  lookin'  now." 

Involuntarily  I  drew  my  head  down  into  my 
shoulders.  The  youth  alongside  laughed  a 
noiseless  laugh. 

"Oh,  you  needn't  worry,"  he  said  in  my 
ear;  "there  ain't  a  chancet  for  him  to  see  us; 
we're  too  well  hid.  At  that,  I  think  he  must've 
suspected  that  this  here  lump  of  dirt  was  a 
shelter  for  our  folks  because  twicet  this  mornin' 
he  took  a  shot  this  way.  One  of  his  bullets 
lodged  somewhere  in  the  sods  over  your  head 
but  the  other  one  hit  that  bush  there.  See 
where  it  cut  the  little  twig  off." 

I  peered  where  he  indicated  and  made  out 
a  ragged  stump  almost  within  arm's  reach  of 

[53] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

me,  where  a  willow  sprout  had  been  shorn 
away.  The  sap  was  oozing  from  the  top  like 
blood  from  a  fresh  wound.  My  instructor  went 
on: 

"But  after  the  second  shot  he  quit.  One  of 
our  fellers  back  behind  us  a  piece  took  a  crack 
at  him  and  either  he  got  him  or  else  the  Heinie 
found  things  gettin'  too  warm  for  him  and 
pulled  his  freight  back  into  them  deep  woods 
further  up  the  hill.  So  it's  been  nice  and  quiet 
ever  since." 

The  captain  wormed  into  the  burrow,  filling 
it  until  it  would  hold  no  more. 

"Is  this  your  first  close-up  peep  at  No  Man's 
Land.^"  he  inquired  in  as  small  a  voice  as  his 
vocal  cords  could  make. 

Before  I  could  answer  the  private  put  in: 

"It  might  a-been  No  Man's  Land  oncet, 
cap'n,  but  frum  nov/  on  it's  goin'  to  be  all 
Amurikin  clear  out  to  them  furtherest  wires 
yonder." 

So  that  was  how  and  when  I  found  the  title 
for  this  chapter.  Everything  considered  I  think 
it  makes  a  very  good  title,  too.  I  only  wish 
I  had  the  power  to  put  as  much  of  the  manifest 
spirit  of  our  soldiers  into  what  I  have  here 
written  as  is  compassed  in  the  caption  I  have 
borrowed. 

What  happened  thereafter  was  largely  per- 
sonal so  far  as  it  related  to  my  companion  and 
me,  but  highly  interesting  from  our  viewpoint. 
We  had  emerged  from  the  front-line  trench  on 

[54] 


"all    AMURIKIN OUT    TO    THEM    WIRES" 

our  way  back.  In  order  to  avoid  a  particularly 
nasty  bit  of  footing  in  the  nearermost  end  of 
the  communication  work  we  climbed  out  of  the 
trench  and  took  a  short  cut  across  a  stretch  of 
long-abandoned  meadowland.  We  thought  we 
were  well  out  of  sight  of  the  Germans,  who 
at  that  point  were  probably  half  a  mile 
away. 

A  cup  of  land  formed  a  natural  shield  from 
any  eyes  except  eyes  in  an  aeroplane — so  we 
thought — and  besides  there  were  no  aeroplanes 
about.  Once  over  the  edge  of  the  trench  and 
down  into  the  depression  we  felt  quite  safe; 
anyway  the  firing  that  was  going  on  seemed  very 
far  away.  We  slowed  up  our  gait.  From  drag- 
ging our  feet  through  the  mire  we  were  dripping 
wet  with  sweat,  so  I  hauled  off  my  coat.  This 
necessitated  a  readjustment  of  belt  and  gas- 
mask straps.  Accordingly  all  three  of  us — 
the  young  intelligence  officer,  my  comrade  and 
I — took  advantage  of  the  halt  to  smoke.  The 
two  others  lit  cigarettes  but  I  preferred  some- 
thing stronger. 

I  was  trying  to  light  a  practical  cigar  with 
a  property  match — which  is  a  very  common 
performance  on  the  part  of  my  countrymen  in 
this  part  of  the  world — when  a  noise  like  the  end 
of  everything — a  nasty,  whiplike  crash — sound- 
ed at  the  right  of  us,  and  simultaneously  a 
German  shell  struck  within  a  hundred  feet 
of  us,  right  on  the  rim  of  the  little  hollow  in 
which    we    had    stopped,    throwing    a    yellow 

[55] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

geyser  of  earth  away  up  into  the  air  and 
peppering  our  feet  and  legs  with  bits  of 
gravel. 

So  then  we  came  on  away  from  there.  1 
chucked  away  my  box  of  matches,  which  were 
French  and  therefore  futile,  and  I  must  have 
mislaid  my  cigar,  which  was  American  and 
therefore  priceless,  for  I  have  never  seen  it 
since.  Anyway  I  had  for  the  time  lost  the 
desire  for  tobacco.  There  are  times  when  one 
cares  to  smoke  and  times  when  one  does  not 
care  to  smoke.  As  we  scuttled  for  the  shelter 
of  the  trench  four  more  shells  fell  in  rapid  suc- 
cession and  burst  within  a  short  distance  of 
where  the  first  one  had  gone  off,  and  each  time 
we  felt  the  earth  shake  under  our  feet  and  out 
of  the  tails  of  our  eyes  saw  the  soil  rising  in  a 
column  to  spread  out  mushroom  fashion  and 
descend  in  pattering  showers. 

So,  using  the  trench  as  an  avenue,  we  con- 
tinued to  go  away  from  there;  and  as  we  w^ent 
guns  continued  to  bay  behind  us.  An  hour 
later,  back  at  battalion  headquarters,  we 
learned  that  the  enemy  dropped  seventy  shells 
— five-inch  shells — in  the  area  that  we  had 
traversed.  But  unless  one  of  them  destroyed 
the  cigar  I  left  behind  me  it  was  all  clear  waste 
of  powder  and  shrapnel,  as  I  am  pleased  to  be 
able  to  report. 

That  night  just  after  dusk  forty-five  of  our 
boys,  with  twice  as  many  Frenchmen,  went 
over  the  top  at  the  very  point  we  had  visited, 

[56] 


*'ALL   AMURIKIN OUT   TO    THEM    WIRES 


J  J 


and  next  morning,  true  enough,  and  for  quite 
a  while  after  that.  No  Man's  Land  was  '*  All 
Amurikin  clear  out  to  them  furtherest  wires." 


[57] 


CHAPTER  III 
HELL'S  FIRE  FOR  THE  HUNS 


THE  surroundings  were  as  French  as 
French  could  be,  but  the  supper  tasted 
of  home.  We  sat  at  table,  two  of  us 
being  correspondents  and  the  rest  of 
us  staff  officers  of  a  regiment  of  the  Rainbow 
Division;  and  the  orderlies  brought  us  Ham- 
burger steak  richly  perfumed  w^ith  onion,  and 
good  hot  soda  biscuit,  and  canned  tomatoes 
cooked  with  cracker  crumbs  and  New  Orleans 
molasses,  and  coffee,  and  fried  potatoes;  and 
to  end  up  with  there  were  genuine  old-fashioned 
doughnuts — "fried  holes,"  the  Far  Westerners 
call  them. 

The  mingled  aromas  of  these  rose  like  familiar 
incense  from  strange  altars,  for  the  room  wherein 
all  of  us,  stout  and  willing  trenchermen,  sat  and 
supped  was  the  chief  room  of  what  once  upon 
a  time,  before  the  war  came  along  and  cracked 
down  upon  the  land,  had  been  some  prosperous 
burgher's  home  on  the  main  street  of  a  drowsy 
village  cuddled  up  in  a  sweet  and  fertile  valley 
under  the  shoulders  of  the  Vosges  Mountains. 

[58] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

From  a  niche  in  the  corner  a  plaster  saint, 
finished  off  in  glaring  Easter-egg  colours,  re- 
garded us  with  one  of  his  painted  eyes,  the 
other  being  gone.  The  stove  had  been  carried 
away,  either  by  the  owner  when  he  fled,  away 
back  in  1914,  or  by  the  invading  Hun  before 
he  retreated  to  his  present  lines  a  few  miles 
distant;  but  a  segment  of  forgotten  stovepipe 
protruded  like  a  waterspout  gone  dry,  from 
its  hole  above  the  mantelpiece.  On  the  plas- 
tered wall  of  battered,  broken  blue  cast,  behind 
the  seat  where  the  colonel  ruled  the  board, 
hung  a  family  portrait  of  an  elderly  gentleman 
with  placid  features  but  fierce  and  indomitable 
whiskers.  The  picture  was  skewed  at  such  an 
angle  the  whiskers  appeared  to  be  growing  out 
into  space  sidewise.  Generations  of  feet  had 
worn  grooves  in  the  broad  boards  of  the  floor, 
which  these  times  was  never  free  of  mud 
stains,  no  matter  how  often  the  orderlies  might 
rid  up  the  place.  So  far  and  so  much  the  set- 
ting was  French. 

But  stained  trench  coats  of  American  work- 
manship dangled  from  pegs  set  in  the  plaster- 
ing, each  limply  suggestive  in  its  bulges  and  its 
curves  of  the  shape  of  the  man  who  wore  it 
through  most  of  his  waking  hours.  The  mantel- 
shelf was  burdened  with  gas  masks  and  sauce- 
pan hats  of  pressed  steel.  A  small  trestle  that 
was  shoved  up  under  one  of  the  two  grimed 
front  windows  bore  a  litter  of  American  news- 
papers and  American  magazines.     As  for  the 

[59] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


doughnuts,  they  were  very  crisp  and  spicy, 
as  good  Yankee  doughnuts  should  be.  I  had 
finished  my  second  one  and  was  reaching  for 
my  third  one  when,  without  warning,  a  very 
creditable  and  realistic  imitation  of  the  crack 
o'  doom  transpired.  Seemingly  from  within  fifty 
yards  of  the  building  which  sheltered  us 
Gabriel's  trumpet  sounded  forth  in  an  ear- 
cracking,  earth-racking,  hair-lifting  blare  calcu- 
lated to  raise  goose  flesh  on  iron  statuary.  The 
dishes  danced  upon  the  table;  the  coffee  slopped 
out  of  the  cups;  and  the  stovepipe  over  the 
chimneypiece  slobbered  down  a  trickle  of 
ancient  soot  that  was,  with  age,  turned  brown 
and  caky.  Beneath  our  feet  we  could  feel  the 
old  house  rocking. 

Through  the  valley  and  across  to  the  foothill 
beyond,  the  obscenity  of  sound  went  ringing 
and  screeching,  vilely  profaning  the  calm  that 
had  descended  upon  the  country  with  the 
going-down  of  the  sun. 

As  its  last  blasphemous  echoes  came  back  to 
us  in  a  diminishing  cadence  one  of  our  hosts, 
a  major,  leaned  forward  with  a  cheerful  smile 
on  his  face  and  remarked  as  he  glanced  at  the 
dial  of  his  wrist  watch:  "There  she  goes — 
right  on  the  minute!" 

Sure  enough,  there  she  went.  Right  and  left, 
before  us  and  behind  us,  from  the  north  of  us 
and  from  the  south  of  us,  and  from  the  east 
and  the  west  of  us,  big  guns  and  small  ones, 
field  pieces,  howitzers,  mortars  and  light  bat- 

[60] 


hell's     fire    for    the    HUNS 

teries,  both  French  and  American  but  mostly 
French,  joined  in,  like  the  wind,  the  wood  and 
the  brass  of  an  orchestra  obeying  the  baton  of 
the  leader.  The  coffee  could  not  stay  in  the 
dancing  cups  at  all.  The  venerable  house  was 
beset  by  an  ague  which  ran  up  its  shaken  sides 
from  the  foundation  stones  to  the  roof  rafters, 
where  the  loosened  tiles  clicked  together  like 
chattering  teeth,  and  back  down  again  to  the 
foundations. 

The  thing  which  we  had  travelled  upward 
of  a  hundred  miles  in  one  of  Uncle  Sam's  auto- 
mobiles to  witness  and  afterward  to  write  about 
was  starting.  The  overture  was  on;  the  show 
would  follow.  And  it  was  high  time  we  claimed 
our  reserved  seats  in  the  front  row. 

I  use  the  word  "show"  advisedly,  because  in 
the  glossary  of  phrases  born  out  of  this  war 
anything  in  the  nature  of  a  thrust  or  a  blow 
delivered  against  the  enemy  is  a  show.  A 
great  offensive  on  a  wide  front  is  a  big  show; 
a  raid  by  night  into  hostile  territory  is  a  little 
show;  a  feint  by  infantry,  undertaken  with 
intent  to  deceive  the  other  side  at  a  given 
point  while  the  real  attack  is  being  launched 
at  a  second  given  point,  and  accompanied  by 
much  vain  banging  of  gunpowder  and  much 
squibbing-off  of  rockets  and  flares  and  star 
shells  is  a  "Chinese  show" — to  quote  the  cant 
or  trade  name;  I  think  the  English  first  used  the 
term,  but  our  fellows  have  been  borrowing  ever 
since  the  first  contingent  came  over  last  year. 

[61] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

This  particular  show  to  which  we  had  been 
bidden  as  special  guests  was  to  be  a  foray  by 
night  over  the  tops  preceded  by  artillery  prep- 
aration. Now  such  things  as  these  happen 
every  night  or  every  day  somewhere  on  the 
Western  Front;  times  are  when  they  happen  in 
different  sectors  at  the  rate  of  half  a  dozen 
within  the  twenty-four  hours.  In  the  dis- 
patches each  one  means  a  line  or  so  of  type; 
in  the  field  it  means  a  few  prisoners,  a  few 
fresh  graves,  a  few  yards  of  trench  work  blasted 
away,  a  few  brier  patches  of  barbed  wire  to  be 
repatched;  in  the  minds  of  most  readers  of  the 
daily  papers  it  means  nothing  but  the  tire- 
some reiteration  of  a  phrase  that  is  tiresome 
and  staled.  But  to  us  it  meant  something. 
It  was  our  boys  who  were  going  in  and  go- 
ing over;  and  our  guns  were  to  be  partners  in 
the  prior  enterprise  of  blazing  the  way  for 
them. 

No  matter  how  much  one  mav  read  of  the 
cost  of  war  operations  in  dollars  and  in  time 
and  in  labour,  I  am  sure  one  does  not  really 
begin  to  appreciate  the  staggering  expenditure 
of  all  three  that  is  requisite  to  accomplish  even 
the  smallest  of  aggressive  movements  until  one 
has  opportunity,  as  we  now  had,  to  see  with 
one's  ovm  eyes  what  necessarily  had  to  be 
done  by  way  of  preliminary. 

Take  for  instance  the  present  case.  The  raid 
in  hand  was  to  be  no  great  shakes  of  a  raid. 
Forty-five    Americans    and    three    times    their 

[62] 


hell's     fire    for    the    HUNS 

number  of  Frenchmen  would  participate  in  it. 
Within  twenty  minutes,  if  all  went  well — and  it 
did — they  would  have  returned  from  their  ex- 
cursion into  hostile  territory,  with  prisoners 
perhaps,  or  else  with  notes  and  letters  taken 
from  the  bodies  of  dead  enemies  which  might 
serve  to  give  the  Intelligence  Department  a 
correct  appraisal  of  the  character  and  numbers 
of  the  troops  opposing  us  in  this  sector.  In  the 
vast  general  scheme  of  the  campaign  now  about 
renewing  itself  it  would  be  no  more  than  an 
inconsequential  pin  prick  in  the  foe's  side — a 
thing  to  be  done  and  mentioned  briefly  in  the 
dispatches,  and  then  forgotten. 

But  mark  you  how  great  and  how  costly  the 
artillery  accompaniment  nmst  be.  More  than 
a  hundred  guns,  ranging  in  calibre  from  a  nine- 
inch  bore  down  to  a  three-inch  bore,  would 
join  in  the  preparation  and  in  the  barrage  fire. 
More  than  ten  thousand  rounds  of  ammunition 
would  be  fired,  this  not  taking  into  account 
the  supplies  for  the  forty-three  machine  guns 
and  for  the  batteries  of  trench  mortars  which 
were  to  cooperate.  ]\Iany  a  great  battle  of  our 
Civil  War  had  been  fought  out  with  the  ex- 
penditure on  both  sides  of  one-tenth  or  one- 
twentieth  part  the  gross  weight  of  metal  that 
would  be  directed  at  the  boche  beyond  the  ridge. 
The  cost  for  munitions  alone,  excluding  every 
other  item  of  a  score  of  items,  might  run  to  a 
quarter  of  a  million  dollars;  might  conceivably 
run  considerably  beyond  that  figure.    And  the 

[63] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

toil  performed  and  the  pains  taken  beforehand 
to  insure  success — wowie! 

For  days  past  the  French  had  been  bringing 
up  pieces  and  massing  them  here  for  the  pur- 
pose of  this  one  Httle  stab  at  the  Hun's  armoured 
flank.  As  we  travelled  hither  we  had  seen  the 
motor-drawn  guns  labouring  along  the  wide 
high  roads;  had  seen  the  ammunition  trucks 
crawling  forward  in  long  lines;  had  seen  at 
every  tiny  village  behind  the  Front  the  gun 
crews  resting  in  bad  streets  named  for  good 
saints.  By  the  same  token,  on  the  following 
day,  which  was  Sunday,  we  were  to  see  the  same 
thing  repeated,  except  that  then  the  procession 
would  be  headed  the  other  way — going  back 
to  repeat  the  same  wearisome  proceeding  else- 
where. 

Days,  too,  had  been  spent  in  planning  the 
raid;  in  mapping  out  and  plotting  ouf  the 
especial  spot  chosen  for  attack;  in  coordinating 
all  the  arms  of  the  service  which  would  be 
employed;  in  planning  signals  for  the  show  and 
drilling  its  actors.  And  now  all  this  prepara- 
tion requisite  and  essential  to  the  carrying  out 
of  the  undertaking  had  been  completed;  and  all 
the  guns  had  been  planted  in  their  appointed 
places  and  craftily  hidden ;  and  all  the  shells  had 
been  brought  up — thousands  of  tons  of  them — 
and  properly  bestowed;  and  the  little  handful 
of  men  who  were  to  have  a  direct  hand  in  the 
performance  of  the  main  job,  for  which  all  the 
rest  would   be  purely   preliminary,   had   been 

[64] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 


chosen  and  sent  forward  to  ordained  stations, 
there  to  await  the  word.  And  so  up  we  got 
from  table  and  went  out  across  a  threshold, 
which  quaked  like  a  living  thing  as  we  crossed 
it,  to  see  the  spectacular  side  of  the  show. 

Inside  the  house  the  air  had  been  churned 
up  and  down  by  the  detonations.  Outside 
literally  it  was  being  rent  into  fine  bits.  One 
had  the  feeling  that  the  atmosphere  was  all 
shredded  up  fine,  so  that  instead  of  lying  in 
layers  upon  the  earth  it  floated  in  torn  and 
dishevelled  strips;  one  had  the  feeling  that  the 
upper  ether  must  be  full  of  holes  and  voids 
and  the  rushing  together  of  whipped  and  eddy- 
ing wind  currents.  This  may  sound  incoherent, 
but  I  find  in  my  vocabulary  no  better  ter- 
ninology  to  convey  a  sense  of  the  impression 
that  possessed  me  as  I  stepped  forth  into  the 
open. 

We  had  known  in  advance  that  there  were 
guns  in  great  number  disposed  about  the  sur- 
rounding terrain.  Walking  about  under  mili- 
tary guidance  in  the  afternoon  we  had  seen 
sundry  batteries  ensconced  under  banks,  in 
thickets  and  behind  low  natural  parapets  where 
the  earth  ridged  up;  and  had  noted  how  cun- 
ningly they  had  been  concealed  from  aeroplanes 
scouting  above  and  from  the  range  of  field  glasses 
in  the  German  workings  on  beyond. 

But  we  had  no  notion  until  then  that  there 
were  so  many  guns  near  by  or  that  some  of 
them  were  so  close  to  the  village  where  we 

[65] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

had  stopped  to  eat.  We  must  almost  have 
stepped  on  some  of  them  without  once  sus- 
pecting their  presence.  The  abihty  of  the 
French  so  well  to  hide  a  group  of  five  big  pieces, 
each  with  a  carriage  as  large  as  a  two-ton 
truck  and  each  with  a  snout  projecting  two  or 
three  yards  beyond  it,  and  with  a  limber  pro- 
jecting out  behind  it,  shows  what  advances 
the  gentle  arts  of  ambuscade  and  camouflage 
have  made  since  this  war  began.  Seen  upon 
the  open  road  a  big  cannon  painted  as  it  is 
from  muzzle  to  breach  with  splotchings  of  yel- 
lows and  browns  and  ochres  seems,  for  its 
size,  the  most  conspicuous  thing  in  the  world. 
But  once  bedded  down  in  its  nest,  with  its 
gullet  resting  upon  the  ring  back  of  earth 
that  has  been  thrown  up  for  it,  and  a  miracle 
of  protective  colouration  instantaneously  is 
achieved.  Its  whole  fabric  seems  to  melt  into 
and  become  a  part  of  the  soil  and  the  withered 
herbage  and  the  dirt-coloured  sandbags  which 
encompass  it  abaft,  alongside  and  before.  It 
is  the  difference  between  a  mottled  snake 
crawling  across  a  brick  sidewalk  and  the  same 
snake  coiled  and  motionless  amid  dried  leaves 
and  boulders  in  the  woods.  Nature  always  has 
protected  her  wild  creatures  thus;  it  took  the 
greatest  of  wars  for  mankind  to  learn  a  lesson 
that  is  as  old  as  creation  is. 

Standing  there  in  the  square  of  the  wrecked 
village  we  could  sense  that  in  all  manner  of 
previously  unsuspected  coverts  within  the  im- 

[66] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

mediate  vicinity  guns  were  at  work — guns 
which  ranged  from  the  French  seventy-fives 
to  big  nine-inch  howitzers.  As  yet  twilight 
had  not  sufficiently  advanced  for  us  to  see  the 
flash  of  the  firing,  and  of  course  nowadays 
there  is  mighty  little  smoke  to  mark  the  single 
discharge  of  a  single  gun;  but  we  could  tell 
what  went  on  by  the  testimony  of  a  most  vast 
tumult. 

We  were  ringed  about  by  detonations;  by 
jars  which  impacted  against  the  earth  like 
blows  of  a  mighty  sledge  on  a  yet  mightier 
smithy;  by  demoniac  screechings  which  tore 
the  tortured  welkin  into  still  finer  bits;  by 
fierce  clangings  of  metal;  by  thudding  echoes 
floating  back  from  where  the  charges  had 
burst;  by  the  more  distant  voices  of  certain 
German  guns  replying  to  our  salvo  as  our  gun- 
ners dedicated  the  dusk  to  all  this  unloosened 
hellishness  and  offered  up  to  the  evening  star 
their  sulphurous  benedictions.  It  was  Thor, 
Vulcan,  Tubal  Cain,  Bertha  Krupp  and  the 
Bethlehem  Steel  Works  all  going  at  full  blast 
together;  it  was  a  thousand  Walpurgis  Nights 
rolled  into  one,  with  Dante's  Inferno  out- 
Infernoed  on  the  side.  And  yet  by  a  curious 
phenomenon  we  who  stood  there  with  this 
hand-made,  man-made  demonism  unleashed 
and  prevalent  about  us  could  hear  plainly 
enough  what  a  man  five  feet  away  who  spoke 
in  a  fairly  loud  voice  might  be  saying. 

"You  think  this  is  brisk,  eh.^^"  asked  our 

[67] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

friend,  the  major.  "Well,  it's  only  the  starter; 
the  ball  has  just  opened." 

He  tucked  his  thumbs  into  the  girth  harness- 
ings  of  his  Sam  Browne  and  spraddled  his  legs 
wide  apart. 

"Wait,"  he  promised;  "just  wait  until  all 
the  guns  get  into  action  in  twenty  minutes  or 
half  an  hour  from  now.  Then  you'll  really 
hear  something.  Take  it  from  me,  you  will. 
And  in  the  meantime  we  might  go  along 
with  these  fellows  yonder,  don't  you  think 
so.^" 

Through  the  deepening  twilight  we  followed 
a  party  of  French  infantrymen  up  a  gentle 
slope  to  the  crest  of  a  little  hill  behind  the 
shattered  town,  where  the  cemetery  was.  In 
this  light  the  horizon-blue  uniforms  took  on 
the  colour  tone  of  the  uniforms  worn  by  the 
Confederates  in  our  Civil  War,  but  their  painted 
metal  helmets  looked  like  polished  turtle 
shells.  They  slouched  along,  as  the  poilu  loves 
to  slouch  along  when  not  fully  accoutred,  their 
hands  in  their  breeches  pockets  and  their  half- 
reefed  putties  flapping  upon  their  shanks.  We 
trailed  them,  and  some  of  our  soldiers,  officers 
and  enlisted  men,  trailed  us. 

Half  an  hour  later  I  was  to  witness  a  curious 
and  yet,  I  think,  a  characteristic  thing.  Most 
of  the  American  privates  grew  tired  of  the 
spectacle  that  was  spread  out  before  them  and 
slipped  away  to  their  billets  to  go  to  bed — 
this,  too,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  scarcely  one 

[68] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

of  them  had  ever  witnessed  cannonading  on  so 
extensive  a  scale  or  indeed  on  any  scale  before. 
Nevertheless,  the  bombardment  speedily  be- 
came to  them  a  commonplace  and  rather  tedi- 
ous affair. 

"Come  on,  you  fellows,"  I  he^rd  one  tall 
stripling  say  to  a  couple  of  his  mates.  "Me 
for  the  hay.  If  the  Heinies  would  only  slam 
a  few  big  ones  back  in  this  direction  there 
might  be  some  fun,  but  as  it  is,  there's  nothin' 
doin'  round  here  for  me." 

But  the  Frenchmen,  all  intent  and  alert, 
stayed  until  the  show  ended.  Yet  a  thing 
like  this  was  an  old  story  to  them,  for  they 
were  veterans  at  the  game  whereat  our  men  still 
were  the  greenest  of  novices.  I  suppose  there 
was  an  element  of  theatricalism  in  the  sight 
and  in  the  fury  of  sound  which  appealed  to 
the  Gallic  sense  of  drama  that  was  in  them. 
Be  the  cause  what  it  was,  the  thing  occurred 
just  as  I  am  telling  it. 

We  mounted  the  hill  and  rounded  the  stone 
wall  of  the  burying  ground.  The  village  in  the 
hollow  below  had  been  quite  battered  out  of 
its  original  contours,  but  strangely  enough  the 
cemetery,  through  the  years  of  intermittent 
fighting  and  shell  firing  that  had  waged  about 
it,  was  almost  unscathed.  It  was  a  populous 
place,  the  cemetery  was,  as  we  had  noted 
earlier  in  the  day.  Originally  it  had  contained 
only  the  graves  of  the  inhabitants,  but  now 
these   were   outnumbered    twenty   to   one   by 

[69] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

mounds  covering  French  soldiers  who  had  fallen 
in  action  or  had  died  of  wounds  or  natural 
causes  in  this  immediate  vicinity.  The  same 
is  true  of  hundreds  of  other  graveyards  in  this 
country;  is  probably  true  of  most  of  France's 
cemeteries. 

I  have  seen  places  where  the  wooden  crosses 
made  hedge  rows,  line  behind  line  for  miles  on 
a  stretch,  and  so  thick-set  were  the  markers 
that,  viewed  from  the  distance,  they  conveyed 
the  impression  of  paling  fences. 

France  has  become  a  land  of  these  wooden 
crosses  and  these  six-foot  mounds.  It  is  part 
of  the  toll — a  small  part  of  the  toll — she  has 
paid  for  the  right  of  freedom  and  in  the  fight 
to  make  this  world  once  more  a  fit  place  for 
decent  beings  to  abide  in. 

On  the  knoll  behind  the  cemetery  we  came 
to  a  halt.  Night  was  creeping  down  from  the 
foothills,  making  the  earth  black  where  before 
it  had  faded  to  a  common  grey;  but  overhead 
the  sky  still  showed  in  the  last  faint  traces  of 
the  afterglow,  with  the  blue  of  an  unflawed 
turquoise  against  which  the  stars  stood  out  like 
crumbs  of  pure  gold.  The  broken  and  snaggled 
roof  lines  of  the  clumped  houses  of  the  town 
were  vanishing;  the  mountain  beyond  seemed 
creeping  up  nearer  and  nearer  to  us.  More 
plainly  than  before  we  could  mark  out  the 
positions  of  the  nearmost  batteries  for  now  at 
each  discharge  of  a  gun  a  darting  jab  of  red 
flame  shot  forth.     WTiere  all  the  guns  of  a 

[70] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

battery  were  being  served  and  fired  in  rapid 
succession  the  blazes  ran  together  like  hem- 
stitches, making  one  think  of  a  fiery  needle 
plying  in  and  out  of  a  breadth  of  black  velvet. 
Farther  away  the  flashes  were  blurred  into 
broader  and  paler  flares  so  that  on  three  sides 
of  us  the  horizon  was  circled  with  constantly 
rising,  constantly  dying  glows  like  heat  light- 
ning on  a  summer  night. 

The  points  where  shells  fell  and  burst  were 
marked  for  us  with  red  geysers,  which  uprose 
straight  instead  of  slanting  out  at  a  slightly 
upward  tilted  angle,  as  did  the  spoutings  from 
the  mouths  of  the  guns.  As  nearly  as  we 
might  tell  the  enemy  fire  was  comparatively 
light.  Only  we  could  see  upon  the  far  flanks 
of  the  little  mountain  in  front  of  us  a  distant 
flickering  illumination,  which  showed  that  his 
counter  batteries  were  busy.  On  every  hand 
white  signal  rockets  rose  frequently,  and  occa- 
sionally flares  hung  burning  halfway  up  the 
walls  of  the  sky. 

Of  a  sudden  all  hell  broke  loose  directly  be- 
hind us.  I  use  the  term  without  desire  to  be  pro- 
fane and  in  a  conscientious  effort  to  give  some 
notion  of  a  physical  occurrence.  At  any  rate 
it  seemed  to  us  that  all  hell  let  loose.  What 
really  happened  was  that  two  guns  of  a  French 
battery  of  nine-inch  heavies,  from  their  post 
directly  in  our  rear  and  not  more  than  an  eighth 
of  a  mile  distant  from  us,  had  fired  simultane- 
ously, and  their  sheUs  had  travelled  directly 

[71] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

over  our  heads,  aiming  for  an  unseen  objective 
miles  forward. 

Then,  and  every  time  thereafter  that  one  of 
the  nine-inchers  spewed  its  bellyful  of  high  ex- 
plosive forth,  the  sound  of  it  dominated  and 
overmastered  all  other  sounds.  First  there  was 
the  crash — a  crash  so  great  that  our  inadequate 
tongue  yields  neither  adjective  nor  noun  fitly 
to  comprehend  it,  the  trouble  being  that  the 
language  has  not  kept  step  with  the  develop- 
ments of  artillery  in  this  war.  Our  dictionary 
is  going  to  need  an  overhauling  when  this  job 
of  licking  Germany  is  finished. 

Well,  first  off  there  was  the  crash  that  was 
like  the  great  granddaddy  of  all  the  crashes  in 
the  world,  making  one  feel  that  its  vocal  force 
must  have  folded  up  the  heavens  like  a  scroll. 
Then,  as  a  part  of  it,  would  come  the  note  of 
the  projectile  rushing  through  the  ripped  ether 
above  us,  and  this  might  be  likened  to  a  long 
freight  train  travelling  on  an  invisible  aerial 
right  of  way  at  a  speed  a  thousand  times 
greater  than  any  freight  train  ever  has  or  ever 
will  attain.  Then  there  w^ould  float  back  a 
tremendous  banshee  wail,  and  finally,  just  be- 
fore the  roar  of  the  shell's  explosion,  a  whine 
as  though  a  lost  puppy  of  the  size  of  ten  ele- 
phants were  wandering  through  the  skies,  com- 
plaining in  a  homesick  key  as  it  went — the 
whole  transaction  taking  place  in  an  infinitesi- 
mal part  of  the  time  which  has  here  been  re- 
quired for  me  to  set  down  my  own  auricular 

[72] 


Hell's  fire  for  the  huns 

impressions  of  it,  and  incidentally  creating  an 
infinitely  more  vivid  impression  than  possible 
can  be  suggested  by  my  lame  and  inadequate 
metaphors. 

Comparatively,  there  was  a  hush  in  the 
clamour  and  clangour  succeeding  this  happen- 
ing—not that  the  firing  in  any  way  abated, 
for  rather  was  it  augmented  now — but  only  that 
it  seemed  so  to  me;  and  in  the  lull,  away  off 
on  our  left,  I  could  for  the  first  time  make  out 
the  whirring,  ripping  sound  of  a  machine  gun 
or  a  row  of  machine  guns. 

The  major  consulted  the  luminous  face  of  his 
wrist  watch. 

"I  thought  so,"  he  vouchsafed.  "It's  time 
for  the  barrage  to  start  and  for  the  boys  to  go 
over  the  top.  Now  we  ought  to  see  some  real 
fireworks  that'll  make  what  has  gone  on  up 
to  now  seem  puny  and  trifling  and  no  ac- 
count." 

Which,  all  things  considered,  was  an  under- 
estimation of  what  ensued  hard  on  the  heels 
of  his  announcement.  Personally  I  shall  not 
attempt  to  describe  it;  the  size  of  the  task 
leaves  me  abashed  and  mortified.  But  if  the 
reader  in  the  goodness  of  his  heart  and  abun- 
dance of  his  patience  will  re-read  what  already 
I  have  written  in  an  effort  to  tell  him  what  I 
had  heard  and  had  seen  and  had  felt,  and  will 
multiply  it  by  ^ve,  adding,  say,  fiifty  per  cent 
of  the  sum  total  for  good  measure,  he  will 
have,  I  trust,  a  measure  of  comprehension  of 

[  73  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

the  ensemble.  But  he  must  do  the  work;  my 
founts  are  dry. 

Furthermore,  he  must  inagine  the  augmented 
hullabaloo — which  should  be  pronounced  hella- 
baloo — going  on  for  twenty-five  minutes  at 
such  rate  that  no  longer  might  one  distinguish 
separate  reports — save  only  when  the  devil's 
fast  freight  aforementioned  passed  over  our 
heads — but  all  were  mingled  and  fused  into 
one  composite,  continuous,  screeching,  whining, 
wailing,  splitting  chorus. 

Twenty-five  minutes  thus,  and  then  a  green 
rocket  went  up  from  near  the  forward  post  of 
command  where  those  directly  in  charge  of  the 
operation  watched,  and  before  it  had  descended 
in  a  spatter  of  emerald  sparks  which  dimmed 
out  and  died  as  they  neared  the  earth  the  firing 
from  our  batteries  began  to  lessen  in  volume 
and  in  rapidity.  Within  those  twenty-five  min- 
utes the  real  object  of  the  operation  had  taken 
place.  Either  the  raiders  had  gone  over  the 
top  or  they  had  been  driven  back  in ;  either  they 
had  accomplished  their  design  of  penetrating 
the  enemy's  second  line  of  defences  or  they  had 
failed.  In  any  event  the  movement,  all  care- 
fully timed  and  all  mathematically  worked  out, 
was  as  good  as  over.  To  learn  better  at  first- 
hand exactly  what  results  had  been  obtained  we 
returned  to  the  village  and  passed  through  it 
and  picking  our  way  in  the  inky  darkness  went 
along  a  road  toward  the  post  of  command. 

The  road,  though,  was  deserted,  and  after  a 

[74] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

bit  we  retraced  the  way  back  to  the  building 
where  we  had  supped  and  made  ourselves  com- 
fortable in  the  room  of  the  colonel  of  the  regi- 
ment holding  the  line  at  this  particular  point. 
An  orderly  brought  us  the  last  of  the  doughnuts 
to  nibble  on,  and  upon  the  ancient  hearthstone 
we  took  turns  at  cracking  French  hazelnuts 
with  a  hammer  while  at  intervals  the  building 
jarred  to  the  thumpings  of  such  guns  as  contin- 
ued to  fire. 

Nearly  an  hour  passed,  and  then  in  came  the 
colonel  and  with  him  a  French  liaison  officer, 
both  of  them  with  tired  lines  about  their 
mouths.  They  had  been  under  a  strain,  as  their 
looks  showed,  and  they  flung  themselves  down 
on  adjacent  cots  with  little  sighs  of  relief  and 
told  us  the  news.  In  a  way  the  raid  had  been 
a  success;  in  another  way  it  had  not.  All  the 
men  who  went  over  the  top  had  returned  again 
after  penetrating  up  to  the  German  secondary 
trenches.  Several  of  the  Frenchmen  had  been 
wounded,  not  seriously.  None  of  the  Americans 
had  anything  worse  than  barbed-wire  cuts  and 
bruised  shins  to  show  for  his  experience. 

Returning,  the  raiders  reported  that  our  fire 
had  completely  obliterated  the  hostile  front 
trench  and  had  ripped  its  protecting  wire  jungle 
into  broken  ends.  Likewise  it  had  completely 
abolished  such  boches  as  had  tarried  too  long 
in  the  enemy's  forward  pits  and  posts.  Of  these 
unfortunates  only  dismembered  trunks  had 
been  found,  with  one  exception.    This  exception 

[75] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

was  a  body  lying  in  a  shell  hole,  and  not  badly 
mangled  but  completely  nude.  By  some  freak 
the  shell  which  killed  the  German  had  stripped 
him  stark  naked  down  to  his  boots. 

But  the  total  of  prisoners  taken  was  zero, 
and  likewise  it  was  cipher.  Forewarned  by 
the  preparatory  volleying  of  the  big  guns  play- 
ing on  his  counter  batteries,  the  wily  German, 
following  his  recently  adopted  custom,  had,  be- 
fore the  barrage  began,  drawn  in  his  defending 
forces  from  the  first  line,  leaving  behind  only 
a  few,  who  fell  victims  to  the  first  few  direct 
hits  scored  by  our  side;  and  therein  the  raid 
had  failed. 

In  the  next  sector  on  our  right,  where  a  day- 
light raid  had  been  undertaken  two  hours  be- 
fore ours  got  under  way,  the  raiders  had  suf- 
fered a  few  casualties  but  had  brought  back 
two  wounded  captives;  and  in  another  sector, 
on  our  left,  yet  a  third  raid  had  produced  four 
prisoners.  I  saw  the  unhappy  four  the  follow- 
ing day  on  their  way  back  to  a  laager  under 
guard.  One  of  them  was  a  middle-aged,  sickly- 
looking  man,  and  the  remaining  three  were 
weedy,  half -grown,  bewildered  boys;  very  dif- 
ferent looking,  all  of  them,  from  the  prime 
sinewy  material  which  formed  the  great  ajmies 
I  had  seen  pouring  through  Belgium  in  the  late 
summer  of  1914. 

All  four  of  them,  moreover,  were  wall-eyed 
with  apprehension,  and  flinchy  and  altogether 
most  miserable  looking.     Not  even  a  night  of 

[76] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

fair  treatment  and  a  decent  breakfast  had 
served  to  cure  them  of  a  delusion  that  Ameri- 
cans would  take  prisoners  alive  only  for  the 
pleasure  of  putting  them  to  death  at  leisure 
afterward.  What  struck  me  as  even  more  sig- 
nificant of  the  change  in  the  personnel  of  the 
Kaiser's  present  army — conceding  that  these 
specimens  might  be  accepted  as  average  sam- 
ples of  the  mass — was  that  not  one  of  them 
wore  an  Iron  Cross  on  his  blouse.  From  per- 
sonal observations  in  the  first  year  of  the  war  I 
had  made  up  my  mind  that  the  decoration  of 
the  Iron  Cross  in  the  German  Army  was  like 
vaccination  in  our  own  country,  being,  as  one 
might  say,  compulsory.  Here,  though,  was  evi- 
dence either  that  the  War  Lord  was  running 
out  of  metal  or  that  his  system  had  slipped  a 
cog.  Likewise  it  was  to  develop  later  that  the 
prisoners  I  saw  wore  paper  underclothing. 

But  I  am  getting  ahead  of  my  story.  The 
colonel,  lying  back  on  his  cot  with  his  head  on 
a  canvas  pillow  and  his  muddied  legs  crossed, 
said  at  the  conclusion  of  his  account: 

"Well,  we  failed  to  bag  any  live  game,  but 
anyhow  our  boys  behaved  splendidly.     They  •  ■''-'^m. 

went  over  the  top  cheering  and  they  came  back 
in  singing.  You'd  never  have  guessed  they 
were  green  hands  at  this  game  or  that  this 
was  the  first  time  they  had  ever  crossed  No 
Man's  Land." 

To  the  truth  of  a  part  of  what  he  said  I 
could  testify  personally,  for  late  that  afternoon 

[77] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

I  had  seen  the  squad  marching  forward  to  the 
spot  where  they  were  to  hne  up  for  the  sally 
later.  They  had  been  like  schoolboys  on  a  lark. 
If  any  one  of  them  was  afraid  he  refused  to 
betray  it;  if  any  one  of  them  was  nervous  at 
the  prospect  before  him  he  hid  his  nervousness 
splendidly  well.  Only,  from  them  as  they  passed 
us,  they  radiated  a  great  pride  in  having  been 
chosen  for  the  job,  and  a  great  confidence  in  its 
outcome,  and  a  great  joy  that  to  them  thus 
early  in  their  soldiering  had  come  the  coveted 
chance  to  show  the  stuff  that  was  in  them. 
And  while  they  passed,  our  friend  the  major, 
standing  alongside  watching  them  go  by,  had 
said  with  all  the  fervency  of  a  man  uttering  a 
prayer: 

"By  Jove,  aren't  they  bully!  No  officer 
could  ask  for  finer  men  than  that  for  his  outfit. 
But  they're  leaving  oodles  of  disappointment 
behind  them  at  that." 

"How's  that.'^"  I  asked. 

"I'll  tell  you  how,"  he  said:  "Yesterday  when 
the  scheme  for  this  thing  was  completed  we 
were  told  that  forty-five  men  out  of  our  regi- 
ment were  to  be  allowed  to  take  part  in  to- 
night's doings.  That  meant  fifteen  men  out 
of  each  battalion.  So  yesterday  evening  at 
parade  I  broke  the  glad  tidings  to  my  bat- 
talion and  called  for  volunteers,  first  warning 
the  men  as  a  matter  of  routine  that  the  work 
would  be  highly  dangerous  and  no  man  need 
feel  called  upon  to  offer  himself.     Do  you  want 

[78] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

to  know  how  many  men  out  of  that  battahon 
volunteered?  Every  single  sohtary  last  dog- 
goned  one  of  them,  that's  all!  They  came  at 
me  like  one  man.  So  to  save  as  much  heart- 
burning as  possible  I  left  the  choice  of  fifteen 
out  of  nearly  a  thousand  to  the  top  sergeants 
of  the  companies.  And  in  all  your  life  you 
never  saw  fifteen  fellows  so  tickled  as  the  fifteen 
who  were  selected,  and  you  never  saw  nine 
hundred  and  odd  so  downhearted  as  the  lot 
who  failed  to  get  on  the  list. 

"That  wasn't  all  of  it,  either,"  he  went  on. 
"Naturally  there  were  some  men  who  had  been 
off  on  detail  of  one  sort  or  another  and  hadn't 
been  at  parade.  When  they  came  last  night 
and  found  out  what  had  happened  in  their  ab- 
sence— well,  they  simply  raised  merry  blue 
hell,  that's  all.  They  figured  somehow  they'd 
been  cheated.  As  a  result  I  may  say  that  my 
rest  was  somewhat  broken.  Every  few  min- 
utes, all  night  long,  some  boy  would  break  into 
my  room,  and  in  the  doorway  salute  and  say, 
in  a  broken-hearted  way :  'Now  look  here,  major, 
this  ain't  square.  I  got  as  much  right  to  go 
over  the  top  as  any  feller  in  this  regiment  has, 
and  just  because  I  happened  to  be  away  this 
evenin'  here  I  am  chiselled  out  of  my  chance 
to  go  along.  Can't  you  please,  sir,  ask  the 
adjutant  or  somebody  to  let  me  in  on  this?' 

"That  substantially  was  what  every  one  of 
them  said.  And  when  I  turned  them  down 
some  of  'em  went  away  crying  like  babies." 

[79] 


IHE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

He   glanced   away   across   the   blue   hill.      "I 
guess  maybe  I  did  a  little  crying  myself." 

I  thought  about  what  the  major  had  said 
and  what  the  colonel  had  said  and  what  I 
mvself  had  seen  after  I  had  climbed  some 
shaky  stairs  to  be  bedded  down  for  the  night 
on  a  pallet  of  blankets  upon  the  floor  of  a  room 
where  several  tired-out  officers  already  snored 
away,  oblivious  of  the  reverberations  of  the 
shelling  from  our  guns  and  from  the  enemy's, 
which  went  on  until  nearly  daybreak. 

In  the  morning  I  got  insight  into  another 
phase  of  the  enlisted  Yank's  understanding. 
We  came  downstairs  to  breakfast — to  a  Sun- 
day morning  breakfast.  For  the  moment  a 
Sabbath  calm  hung  over  the  wrecked  town  and 
over  the  country  roundabout;  all  was  as  peace- 
ful as  a  Quaker  meeting.  Red,  the  colonel's 
orderly,  stood  in  the  doorway  picking  his  teeth. 
Red  is  six  feet  two  inches  tall,  and  dispropor- 
tionately narrow.  He  is  a  member  of  a  regi- 
ment recruited  in  the  INIiddle  West,  but  he 
hails  from  the  Panhandle  of  Texas,  and  betrays 
the  fact  every  time  he  opens  his  mouth.  At 
the  moment  of  our  approach  he  was  addressing 
an  unseen  and  presumably  a  sympathetic  listener 
beyond  the  threshold: 

"Me,  I'm,  plum'  outdone  with  these  here 
French  people,"  I  heard  him  drawl.  "Here 
we've  been  camped  amongst  'em  fer  goin'  on 
four  months  and  they  ain't  learnt  English  yet. 
You'd  think  they'd  want  to  know  how  to  talk 

[80] 


hell's    fire    for    the    HUNS 

to  people  in  a  reg'lar  honest-to-God  language — 
but  no,  seein'  seemin'ly  not  a-tall.  I'd  be 
ashamed  to  be  so  ignorunt  and  show  it.  Course 
oncet  in  a  while  you  do  run  acrost  one  of  'em 
that's  picked  up  a  word  here  and  there;  but 
that's  about  all. 

"Now  f'rinstance  you  take  that  nice-lookin' 
little  woman  with  the  black  eyes  and  the  shiny 
teeth  that  runs  that  there  little  store  in  this 
here  last  town  we  stayed  a  spell  in  before  we 
come  on  up  here.  I  never  could  remember  the 
name  of  that  there  town — it  was  so  outlandish 
soundin' — but  you  remember  the  woman,  don't 
you?  Well,  there's  a  case  in  p'int.  She 
was  bright  enough  lodkin'  but  she  was  like  all 
the  rest — it  seemed  like  she  jest  couldn't  or 
jest  wouldn't  pick  up  enough  reg'lar  words  to 
help  her  git  around.  Ef  I  went  in  her  place 
and  asked  her  fer  sardines  she'd  know  what 
I  meant  right  off  and  hand  'em  over,  but  ef  I 
wanted  some  cheese  she  didn't  have  no  idea 
whut  I  was  talkin'  about.  Don't  it  jest  beat 
all!" 


[8TT 


CHAPTER  IV 
ON  THE  THRESHOLD  OF  BATTLE 

WE  left  Paris  at  an  early  hour  of 
March  25,  which  was  the  morning 
of  the  fourth  day  of  perhaps  the 
greatest  battle  in  the  history  of 
this  or  any  other  war,  and  of  the  third  day  of 
the  bombardment  of  Paris  by  the  long-range 
steel  monster  which  already  had  become  famous 
as  the  latest  creation  of  the  Essen  workshops. 

There  were  three  of  us  and  no  more — Ray- 
mond Carroll,  Martin  Green  and  I.  To  each 
of  the  three  the  present  excursion  was  in  the 
nature  of  a  reunion.  For  more  than  six  years 
we  held  down  adjoining  desks  in  the  city  room 
of  a  New  York  evening  newspaper.  Since  we 
parted,  Carroll  and  I  to  take  other  berths  and 
Green  to  bide  where  he  w^as,  this  had  been  the 
first  time  we  had  met  on  the  same  assignment. 
I  counted  myself  lucky  to  be  in  their  com- 
pany, for  two  better  newspaper  men  never 
walked  in  shoe  leather.  Carroll  among  report- 
ers is  what  Elihu  Root  is  among  corporation 
lawyers.     There   are   plenty   of   men   in   the 

[82] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

journalistic  craft  who  know  why  certain  facts 
pertinent  to  the  proper  telhng  of  a  tale  in  print 
may  not  be  secured;  he,  better  than  almost 
any  man  I  ever  ran  across  in  this  business, 
knows  how  these  facts  may  be  had,  regardless 
of  intervening  obstacles.  In  his  own  peculiar 
way,  which  is  a  calm,  quiet,  detached  way. 
Green  is  just  as  effective.  When  it  comes  to 
figuring  where  unshirted  Hades  is  going  to 
break  loose  next  and  getting  first  upon  the  spot 
he  is  a  regular  Nathan  Bedford  Forrest.  His 
North  American  sanity,  which  is  his  by  birth, 
and  his  South  of  Ireland  wit,  which  is  his  by 
inheritance,  give  strength  and  savour  to  what 
he  writes  once  he  has  assembled  the  details  in 
that  card  index  of  a  mind  of  his. 

We  left  Paris,  heading  north  by  east  in  the 
direction  whence  came  in  dim  reverberations 
the  never-ending  sound  of  the  big  guns  firing 
in  the  biggest  of  all  big  engagements.  Through 
the  courtesy  of  friends  who  are  members  of 
the  French  Government  we  bore  special  passes 
admitting  us  to  the  Soissons  area.  Later  we 
were  to  learn  that  we  were  the  only  individuals 
not  actively  concerned  in  military  operations 
who  at  this  particularly  momentous  time  had 
been  thus  favoured,  all  other  such  passes  having 
been  cancelled;  and  by  the  same  lucky  token 
we  are,  I  believe,  the  only  three  newspaper  men 
of  any  nationality  whatsoever  who  may  lay 
claim  to  having  witnessed  at  first-hand  any 
part  of  the  close-up  fighting  in  the  most  crit- 

[83] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

ical  period  and  at  one  of  the  most  critical  spots 
along  the  crest  of  the  culminating  German 
offensive  of  this  present  year  of  grace  and  gun- 
powder, 1918. 

Indeed,  so  far  as  the  available  information 
goes,  I  think  we  were  the  only  practitioners  of 
the  writing  trade  who  actually  got  to  the  actual 
Front  in  the  first  week  of  the  push,  ^^^lethe^ 
any  of  our  calling  have  got  there  in  the  succeed- 
ing weeks,  I  doubt.  These  times  the  war 
correspondent,  so  called,  does  not  often  enjoy 
such  opportunities.  After  the  army  has  dug 
itself  in  is  another  matter;  then,  within  limita- 
tions, he  may  go  pretty  much  where  he  pleases 
to  go.  But  when  the  shove  is  on  he  stays 
behind,  safely  at  the  rear  with  the  rest  of  the 
camp  followers,  and  compiles  his  dispatches 
from  the  official  communications,  fatting  them 
out  with  details  out  of  the  accounts  of  eye- 
witnesses and  occasionally  of  participants. 

For  the  three  of  us,  though,  was  to  be  vouch- 
safed the  chance  which  comes  but  once  in  the 
modern  newspaperman's  life,  and  sometimes 
not  then.  By  a  combination  of  rare  luck  and 
yet  more  rare  luck  we  not  only  got  to  the 
Front  but  we  got  clear  through  it.  As  I  write 
these  lines  I  figuratively  pat  myself  on  the 
back  at  the  thought  of  having  seen  what  I 
never  expected  to  see  v>^hen  I  landed  on  French 
soil  less  than  a  month  ago.  At  the  same  time 
it  behooves  me  to  disclaim  for  the  members  of 
our  party  that  any  special  sagacity  on  our  part 

[84] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

figured  in  the  transaction.  Good  fortune  came 
flitting  along  and  perched  on  our  shoulders, 
that's  all. 

If  our  passes  had  shared  the  common  fate  of 
those  other  passes  in  being  annulled,  if  any  one 
charged  with  authority  had  seen  fit  to  halt  us, 
if  any  one  of  a  half  dozen  other  things  had  or 
had  not  befallen  us — we  never  should  have  gone 
where  we  did  go. 

Except  that  we  three  were  the  only  passengers 
on  the  train  who  did  not  wear  French  uniforms, 
and  except  that  the  train  ran  very  slowly, 
nothing  happened  on  the  journey  to  distinguish 
it  from  any  other  wartime  journey  on  a  rail- 
road where  always  there  is  to  be  heard  the  dis- 
tant booming  of  the  guns  mingling  with  the 
clickety-clank  of  the  car  wheels,  and  where 
always  the  sight  of  all  manner  of  military 
activities  is  to  be  viewed  from  the  car  windows. 

In  a  deep  cut  we  halted.  When  we  had 
waited  there  for  perhaps  twenty  minutes  a 
kindly  officer  volunteered  the  information  in 
broken  English  that  the  station  at  Soissons 
was  being  shelled  and  that  if  we  intended  to 
enter  the  towTi  it  behooved  us  to  walk  in.  So 
we  took  up  our  traps  and  walked. 

Through  old  trenches  where  long-abandoned 
German  defences  once  had  run  in  zigzags 
across  the  flanks  of  the  hills  we  laboured  up 
to  the  top,  to  find  the  road  along  the  crest 
cumbered  and  in  places  almost  clogged  with 
marching  troops  on  their  way  back  to  rest  bil- 

[85] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

lets,  and  with  civilians  fleeing  southward  from 
Soissons  or  from  evacuated  villages  within  the 
zone  of  active  hostilities.  We  seemingly  were 
the  only  civilians  going  in;  all  those  we  met 
on  that  three-mile  hike  were  coming  out.  To 
me  the  spectacle  was  strikingly  and  pathetically 
reminiscent  of  Belgium  in  mid-August  of  1914 
— old  men  trudging  stolidly  ahead  with  loads 
upon  their  bent  backs;  women,  young  and  old, 
dragging  carts  or  pushing  shabby  baby  car- 
riages that  were  piled  high  with  their  meagre 
belongings;  grave-faced  children  trotting  along 
at  their  elders'  skirts;  wearied  soldiers  falling 
out  of  the  line  to  add  to  their  already  heavy 
burdens  as  they  relieved  some  half-exhausted 
member  of  the  exodus  of  'an  unwieldy  pack. 
Over  the  lamentable  procession  hung  a  fog  of 
gritty  chalk  particles  that  had  been  winnowed 
up  by  the  plodding  feet.  Viewed  through  the 
cloaking  dust  the  figures  drifted  past  us  like 
the  unreal  shapes  of  a  dream.  I  saw  one 
middle-aged  sergeant,  his  whiskers  powdered 
white  and  his  face  above  the  whiskers  masked 
in  a  sweaty  white  paste  like  a  circus  clown's, 
who,  for  all  that  he  was  in  heavy  marching 
order,  had  a  grimed  mite  of  a  baby  snuggled 
up  to  the  breast  of  his  stained  tunic,  with  its 
little  feet  dangling  in  the  crisscross  of  his 
leather  gear  and  its  bobbing  head  on  his  shoul- 
der. He  carried  the  baby  with  one  hand  and 
with  the  other  hand  he  dragged  his  rifle;  and 
he  looked  down  smiling  at  the  bedraggled  little 

[86] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

mother  who  travelled  alongside  him  shoving 
before  her  a  barrow  in  which  another  child 
sat  on  a  pillion  of  bed  clothes. 

I  saw  two  infantrymen  slide  down  a  steep 
embankment  to  give  aid  to  an  old  woman  who 
struggled  with  a  bundle  almost  as  large  as  her- 
self, and  then,  having  accomplished  the  job, 
running  with  their  accoutrements  slapping 
against  their  legs  to  catch  up  with  their  com- 
pany. I  saw  scores  of  sights  such  as  this,  and 
I  did  not  hear  one  word  of  complaint  uttered, 
nor  did  I  look  into  one  face  that  expressed 
aught  save  courage  and  patience.  And  seeing 
these  things,  multiplied  over  and  over  again, 
I  said  to  myself  then,  as  I  say  to  myself  now, 
that  I  do  not  believe  Almighty  God  in  His  in- 
finite mercy^Mesigned  that  such  people  as  these 
should  ever  be  conquered. 

Only  one  person  spoke  to  us.  A  captain, 
grinning  at  us  as  he  plodded  by  at  the  head  of 
his  company,  said  with  a  rearward  flirt  of  his 
thumb  over  his  shoulders:  "No  good,  no  good! 
much  boom-boom!" 

Much  boom-boom  was  emphatically  right. 
Over  the  clustered  tops  of  the  city  the  hostile 
shells  were  cracking,  and  frequently  to  our  ears 
there  came  along  with  the  smashing  notes  of 
the  explosives  the  clatter  of  tumbling  walls  and 
smashing  tiles.  Drawing  nearer  we  divined 
that  the  cannonading  was  directed  mainly  at 
the  railroad  station,  so  skiTting  to  the  left 
of  the  district  under  fire  we  made  our  way 

[87] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

through  almost  deserted  side  streets  to  the  cen- 
tre of  the  town. 

Hardly  a  house  or  a  wall  along  our  route 
but  bore  marks  of  punishment.  Some  were 
fallen  into  heaps  of  ruins;  some  merely  were 
pecked  and  scarred,  with  corners  bitten  out  of 
the  walls  and  chimneys  broken  into  fantastic 
designs.  Indeed  we  found  out  later  that  only 
one  structure  in  Soissons  had  escaped  damage 
in  the  shelling  which  went  on  intermittently 
in  the  earlier  years  of  the  war  and  which  the 
Germans,  with  a  sort  of  futile,  savage  fury,  had 
lately  renewed  from  their  lines  twelve  miles 
away  to  the  northward. 

This  sort  of  thing  appears  to  be  a  favourite 
trick  with  our  enemies.  A  village  or  a  town 
may  be  abandoned  by  all  save  a  few  helpless 
citizens,  living,  God  only  knows  how,  in  the 
litter  of  their  homes ;  the  place  may  be  of  abso- 
lutely no  military  value  to  the  Allies;  possibly 
no  troops  are  quartered  there  and  no  batteries 
or  wagon  trains  are  stationed  within  miles  of  it; 
but  all  the  same  when  the  frenzy  of  their  mad- 
ness descends  upon  them  the  Huns  will  level 
and  loose  their  batteries  upon  the  spot  and 
make  of  the  hideous  hash  which  it  has  become 
a  still  more  hideous  hash.  It  is  as  though  in 
sheer  wantonness  they  kicked  a  corpse. 

We  skirted  the  sides  of  the  wonderful  old 
cathedral,  which  since  1914  has  stood  for  the 
most  part  in  ruins,  with  its  beautiful  stained 
windows — which  never  can  be  replaced,  since 

[88] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

the  art  of  making  such  glass  as  this  has  been 
lost — lying  underfoot  in  broken  splinters  of 
many  colours.  Just  off  the  main  square  we 
secured  quarters  in  a  typical  French  inn  of 
the  second  class,  a  small  place  with  a  grandilo- 
quent name.  Mainly  the  shops  and  houses 
in  the  neighbourhood  were  closed  and  their 
owners  gone  away,  but  the  proprietor  of  the 
little  hotel  and  his  family  and  his  help  still 
abided  under  their  belaboured  roof.  Plainly 
their  motto  was  "Business  as  Usual." 

Their  only  guests  were  a  few  American  Red 
Cross  workers,  both  men  and  women;  a  few 
American  officers  of  the  transport  service;  and 
a  few  French  officers.  But  that  day  at  noon, 
so  we  were  told,  the  whole  staff  turned  in  and 
cooked  and  served,  free  of  charge,  a  plentiful 
hot  meal  to  two  hundred  refugees,  who  stag- 
gered in  afoot  from  districts  now  overrun  by  the 
advancing  Germans.  These  poor  folk  were  all 
departed  when  we  arrived;  French  camions  and 
American  motor  trucks  had  carried  them  away 
to  temporary  asylums  beyond  the  limit  of  the 
shelling,  and  for  us  there  was  abundant  accom- 
modation— seats  at  the  common  dining  table, 
chambers  on  the  second  floor,  and  standing 
room  in  the  deep  wine  cellars  down  below  if  we 
cared  to  occupy  them  when  the  bombardment 
became  heavier  or  when  hostile  aeroplanes  cir- 
cled over  to  drop  down  bombs.  The  members 
of  the  menage,  as  we  learned  later,  slept  reg- 
ularly down  among  the  casks  and  wine  bottles, 

[89] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

because  nearly  every  night  for  a  week  past 
enemy  airmen  had  been  circling  about  doing 
what  hurt  they  could  to  the  town  and  its  re- 
maining inhabitants. 

From  the  single  shattered  window  of  the 
bedroom  to  which  I  was  assigned  I  could  look 
out  and  down  across  the  narrow  roadway  upon 
a  smaller  house  which  had  caught  the  full 
force  of  a  big  shell.  The  thing  must  have  hap- 
pened within  a  day  or  two,  for  the  splintered 
woodwork  and  caved-in  masonry  had  not  yet 
begun  to  wear  the  weathered,  crumbly  look 
that  comes  to  debris  after  a  few  weeks  of  ex- 
posure in  this  rainy  climate,  and  there  was  a 
fresh  powdering  of  dust  upon  the  mass  of 
wreckage  before  the  door.  Curiously  enough 
the  explosive  which  had  reduced  the  interior  of 
the  building  to  a  jumble  of  ruination  left  most 
of  the  roof  rafters  intact,  and  to  them  still  ad- 
hered tiles  in  a  sort  of  ordered  pattern,  with 
gaps  between  the  red  squares,  so  that  the  effect 
might  be  likened  to  a  kind  of  lacy  architectural 
lingerie. 

Any  moment  similar  destruction  might  be 
visited  upon  the  hotel  opposite,  but,  despite 
the  constant  and  the  imminent  danger,  the 
big-bodied,  broad-faced  proprietor  and  his  trim 
small  wife  were  seemingly  as  tranquil  as  though 
they  lived  where  the  roar  of  guns  was  never 
heard.  The  man  who  looks  upon  the  French 
as  an  excitable  race  has  only  to  come  here  now, 
to  this  land,  to  learn  his  error  and  to  realise 

[90] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

that  beneath  their  surface  emotionalism  they 
have  splendid  reserve  forces  of  resolution  and 
fortitude.  By  my  way  of  reasoning,  it  is  with 
these  people  not  merely  a  case  of  getting  used 
to  a  thing — it  is  something  more  than  that, 
something  deeper  than  that.  It  is  a  pure, 
clean  courage  cast  in  the  matrix  of  a  patient 
heroism  which  buoys  them  up  to  carry  on  the 
ordinary  undertakings  of  life  amid  conditions 
abnormal  and  disordered  to  the  point  of  being 
almost  intolerable  when  endured  for  weeks  and 
months  and  years  on  end. 

Having  established  ourselves,  we  set  about 
the  task  of  securing  the  coveted  transportation 
up  to  the  vicinity  of  the  planes  of  contact  be- 
tween the  Allies  and  the  enemy.    The  shelling 
had  somewhat  abated  since  our  arrival,  so  we 
made  so  bold  as  to  trudge  across  town  to  the 
railroad  station,  encountering  but  few  persons 
on  the  way.     In  the  immediate  neighbourhood 
of  the  station  the  evidences  of  recent  strafing 
were  thicker  even  than  in  other  parts  of  the  old 
city.    Where  an  hour  before  a  shell  had  blown 
two  loitering  French  soldiers  to  bits,  a  shattered 
stone  gateway  and  a  wide  hole  in  the  ground 
and  a  great  smearing  of  moist  red  stains  upon 
the  upheaved  earth  spelled  the  tale  of  what  had 
happened  plainly  enough.    A  withered  old  man 
was  doing  his  feeble  best  to  patch  together  the 
split   and   sundered   planks   of   the   gate;   the 
bodies,  what  was  left  of  them,  had  been  re- 
moved by  a  burial  squad. 

[91] 


_      THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

At  the  railroad  terminal  there  was  pressing 
need  for  everything  that  went  on  wheels,  and 
of  a  certainty  there  was  nothing  in  the  nature 
of  a  self-propelled  vehicle  available  for  the  use 
of  three  men  who  came  bearing  no  order  that 
would  give  them  the  right  to  commandeer  gov- 
ernment equipment.  So  our  next  hope,  and 
seemingly  our  last  one,  lay  in  the  French.  At 
a  certain  place  we  found  numbers  of  kindly 
and  sympathetic  officers  with  staff  markings  on 
their  collars,  who  professed  to  be  glad  to  see 
us,  at  the  same  time  expressing  a  polite  surprise 
that  a  trio  of  unannounced  American  newspaper 
men  should  have  dropped  in  upon  them,  seem- 
ingly out  of  the  shell-harassed  skies  above. 

But  when  we  suggested  we  would  appreciate 
the  loan  of  an  automobile  and  with  the  auto- 
mobile an  officer  to  escort  us  up  to  the  battle 
front  they  lifted  eyebrows,  shoulder  blades  and 
arms  toward  heaven,  all  in  the  same  movement 
signifying  chagrin  and  regret.  What  we  asked 
was  quite  impossible,  considering  the  exigencies 
and  emergencies  of  the  moment.  The  most 
formidable  engagement  that  ever  had  been  or 
perhaps  ever  would  be  was  in  midblast.  Every 
available  bit  of  motive  power  was  required; 
every  available  man  was  required. 

Besides,  the  roads,  as  doubtless  we  knew, 
were  blocked  with  reenforcements  hurrying  up 
to  support  the  hard-pressed  British  north  of 
the  Aisne.  Any  other  time,  yes.  But  now — 
no,  and  once  again,  no.     We  were  quite  free 

[92] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

to  stay  on  in  Soissons  if  we  cared  for  a  place 
temporarily  so  unhealthy.  We  might  have 
free  access  to  any  of  the  maps  or  records  on 
hand.  We  might  visit  any  of  the  hospitals  or 
rest  camps  in  the  immediate  vicinity.  But 
further  than  that  our  new  friends  could  not  go. 
They  added,  by  way  of  advice,  that  our  best 
course  would  be  to  return  straightway  to  Paris 
and  come  again  when  the  crisis  had  passed  and 
the  sector  to  the  north  had  somewhat  quieted. 

There  being  nothing  else  to  do,  we  took  a 
walk  to  think  things  over.  The  walk  ended  at 
our  stopping  place  just  as  the  German  guns 
north  of  us  beyond  the  river  resumed  their 
afternoon  serenade.  More  refugees  were  com- 
ing into  the  town  in  a  long  dismal  procession 
from  Chauny  and  Ham  and  Noyon  and 
scores  of  smaller  places.  Some  of  them  had 
been  on  the  road  for  twenty-four  hours,  some 
for  as  long  as  forty-eight  hours.  They  had 
rested  a  while  in  wrecked  and  empty  villages 
during  the  preceding  night,  then  had  risen  at 
daybreak  and  resumed  their  heart-breaking  pil- 
grimage, with  no  goal  in  sight  and  no  destina- 
tion in  view,  and  only  knowing  that  what 
might  lie  ahead  of  them  could  never  by  any 
chance  be  half  so  bad  as  what  the  Germans 
were  creating  behind  them. 

At  the  beginning  of  this  war,  in  Belgium  and 
again  in  Northern  France,  not  many  miles 
from  where  we  then  were,  I  had  seen  on  the 
edges  of  the  vortex  of  battle  and  destruction 

[93] 


_      THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

many  such  eddying,  aimless  streams  of  human 
flotsam  and  jetsam  of  war;  but  to  one  who 
knew  the  facts  of  their  case  the  present  phght 
of  these  poor  wanderers  had  a  special  appeal. 
For  this  was  the  second  time  they  had  been 
dispossessed  from  their  small  holdings,  the 
second  time  they  had  fled  in  huddles  like 
frightened  sheep  before  the  path  of  the  grey 
invader,  the  second  time  all  that  they  owned 
had  been  swept  away  and  smashed  up  and 
wasted  beyond  repairing. 

Driven  out  of  their  homes  in  the  first  four 
weeks  of  the  war,  back  in  1914,  at  the  time  of 
the  great  onslaught  against  Paris,  they  had  been 
kept  away  from  these  homes  for  more  than  two 
years,  all  during  the  German  occupation  of 
their  territory.  After  the  great  victory  of  the 
Allies  over  von  Hindenburg  in  the  Aisne  coun- 
try they  had  returned,  tramping  back  in  pairs 
and  groups  to  the  sites  of  their  homesteads, 
filled  with  the  tenacious  impulse  of  the  French 
peasant  and  the  French  villager  to  reroot  him- 
self in  his  native  soil;  had  returned  to  find  that 
before  the  Germans  retreated  beyond  the 
Chemin  des  Dames  they,  in  accordance  with 
orders  from  the  all-highest  command,  sawed 
down  the  fruit  trees  in  the  little  orchards  and 
burned  the  houses  that  had  sheltered  them,  and 
tore  up  the  vines  and  shovelled  dung  into  the 
drinking  wells. 

Nevertheless,  the  repatriates  had  set  to, 
working  like  beavers  to  restore  a  sorry  sem- 

[94] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

blance  of  the  simple  frugal  communal  system 
under  which  they  and  their  fathers  before  them 
had  existed  since  the  Napoleonic  wars.  And 
now,  just  when  they  were  beginning  to  patch 
together  the  broken  ends  of  their  lives,  when 
with  aid  from  the  French  Government  and  aid 
from  Americans  they  had  cleared  and  planted 
their  devastated  fields  and  had  built  new  habi- 
tations for  themselves  out  of  the  ruins  of  the 
old  ones,  again  the  enemy  had  come  down 
upon  them  like  a  ravening  wolf  on  a  fold;  and 
again  they  had  run  away,  deserting  all  they 
could  not  carry  in  their  arms  or  upon  their 
backs,  and  knowing  full  well  in  the  light  of 
past  experience  that  the  Germans  either  would 
garner  the  work  of  their  hands  or  else  would 
make  an  utter  end  of  it. 

At  a  corner  just  above  the  hotel  we  came  upon 
a  mother  and  her  family  of  nine.  She  was  less 
than  forty  years  old  herself;  her  husband  was 
a  soldier  at  the  Front.  She  wore  wooden 
sabots  on  her  feet,  and  upon  her  body  a  tattered, 
sleazy  black  frock.  Her  eldest  child  was  fifteen 
years  old,  her  youngest  less  than  six  months. 
For  the  ten  of  them  to  travel  a  distance  of 
twelve  miles  had  taken  the  better  part  of  two 
days  and  two  nights.  The  woman  had  contrived 
a  sling  of  an  old  bed  sheet,  which  passed  over 
one  of  her  shoulders  and  under  the  other;  and 
in  this  hammock  contrivance  she  had  carried 
the  youngest  child  against  her  bosom,  with  her 
bodice  open  at  the  breast  so  the  baby  might 

[95] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

suckle  while  she  pushed  a  crippled  perambu- 
lator containing  the  two  next  youngest  bairns. 
The  rest  of  the  brood  had  walked  all  the  way. 
They  were  wearied  beyond  description;  they 
were  incredibly  dirty  and  famishing  for  want  of 
proper  sustenance,  but  not  a  single  one  of  the 
small  wretches  who  was  old  enough  to  speak 
the  word  failed  to  murmur  ''Merci,  merci" 
when  the  neighbours  brought  them  bowls  of 
hot  soup  and  gave  them  sups  of  warm  milk 
and  put  big  slices  of  bread  smeared  with  jam 
into  their  dirtv,  clawlike  little  hands. 

Having  wolfed  down  the  food  they  squatted, 
all  of  them,  against  a  house  front  to  wait  for 
the  camion  which  would  take  them  to  a  refuge 
in  a  Red  Cross  station  a  dozen  miles  away. 
They  had  to  wait  a  good  while,  since  all  the 
available  wagons  were  engaged  in  performing 
similar  merciful  offices  for  earlier  arrivals.  The 
children  curled  up  in  little  heaps  like  kittens 
and  went  to  sleep,  but  the  mother  sat  on  a 
stone  doorstep  with  her  babe  against  her  bare 
flesh,  over  her  heart,  to  keep  it  warm,  and 
stared  ahead  of  her  with  eyes  which  expressed 
nothing  save  a  dumb,  numbed  resignation. 

An  old  priest  in  a  black  robe  came  along  and 
he  stopped,  being  minded,  I  think,  to  utter 
some  message  of  comfort  to  this  wife  of  a 
soldier  of  France,  and  in  her  way,  I  say,  as 
valorous  a  soldier  as  her  husband  could  be, 
did  he  wear  twenty  decorations  for  bravery. 
But  either  the  priest  could  find  no  words  to 

[86] 


ON    THE    THRESHOLD    OF    BATTLE 

say  or  the  words  choked  in  his  throat.  Above 
her  drooped  head  he  made  with  his  hand  the 
sign  of  the  cross  in  the  air  and  went  away.  And 
as  I  stood  looking  on  I  did  in  my  heart  what 
any  man  with  blood  in  his  veins  would  have 
done  had  he  been  there  in  my  stead — I  con- 
signed to  the  uttermost  depths  of  perdition 
the  soul  of  the  Brute  of  Prussia  whose  diseased 
ambition  brought  to  pass  this  thing  and  a  mil- 
lion things  like  unto  it. 


TP71 


CHAPTER  V 
SETTING  A  TRAP  FOR  OPPORTUNITY 


HAD  we  waited  that  night  for  Oppor- 
tunity to  knock  at  our  door  I  am 
indined  to  think  we  might  be  wait- 
ing yet.  We  went  out  and  we  set 
a  trap  for  Opportunity,  and  we  caught  her. 
No  matter  how  or  whence,  the  chance  we  cov- 
eted for  a  lift  to  the  battle  came  to  us  before 
the  night  was  many  hours  old.  But  before  the 
design  assumed  shape  we  were  to  meet  as 
blithe  a  j^oung  Britisher  as  ever  I  have  seen, 
in  the  person  of  one  Captain  Pepper,  a  red- 
cheeked  Yorkshireman  in  his  early  twenties,  a 
fit  and  proper  type  of  the  men  England  has 
sent  out  to  officer  her  forces  overseas. 

One  of  our  Red  Cross  ambulances,  while 
scouting  out  toward  Noyon  that  afternoon, 
picked  him  up  as  he  trudged  up  the  road  alone, 
with  a  fresh  machine-gun  wound  through  the 
palm  of  his  right  hand  and  his  cap  on  the  back 
of  his  head.  His  wound  had  been  tied  up  at  a 
casualty-dressing  station  and  he  had  set  out 
then  to  walk  a  distance  of  twenty-odd  kilo- 

[98] 


SETTING    A    TRAP    FOR    OPPORTUNITY 

metres  to  Soissons,  where  he  was  told  he  might 
find  a  hospital  to  shelter  him. 

He  dined  with  us,  along  with  the  ambulance 
driver  who  brought  him  in;  and  afterward  he 
insisted  on  sitting  a  while  with  us,  though  he 
had  been  fighting  day  and  night  almost  con- 
tinuously since  the  beginning  of  the  battle  and 
plainly  was  far  spent  from  fatigue  and  lack  of 
sleep.  So  far  as  I  might  judge,  though,  he  did 
not  have  a  nerve  in  his  body.  Gesturing  with 
his  swathed  hand  he  told  us  not  what  he  him- 
self had  done — somehow  he  managed  in  his 
self-effacing  way  to  steer  away  from  the  per- 
sonal note  in  his  recital — but  mainly  about  the 
stupendous  tragedy  in  which  he  had  played 
his  part.  Considering  him  as  he  sat  there  on  a 
broken  sofa  with  his  long  legs  outstretched 
before  a  wood  fire,  one  could  not  doubt  that 
it  had  been  a  creditable  part. 

We  gathered  that  in  the  second  day  of  the 
fighting,  as  the  English  fell  back  before  over- 
whelming odds  but  fighting  for  every  inch,  he 
became  separated  from  his  company.  Next 
morning  he  found  himself  without  a  command 
in  the  heels  of  the  orderly  retreat  and  had  of- 
fered himself  for  service  to  the  first  superior 
officer  he  met.  Thereupon  he  was  put  in  charge 
of  a  mixed  detachment  of  two  hundred  men — 
gathered  up  anyhow  and  anywhere — and  with 
his  motley  outfit  had  been  told  off  to  hold  a 
strip  of  woods  somewhere  south  of  Chauny. 
Under  him,  he  said,  were  stragglers  cut  off  from 

[99] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

half  a  dozen  battered  line  regiments,  and  along 
with  these,  cooks,  wagon  drivers,  engineers, 
oflScers'  servants  and  stretcher  bearers.  In 
front  of  the  squad,  beyond  the  woods,  was  a 
strip  of  marsh,  and  this  natural  barrier  gave 
them  an  advantage  which,  plus  pluck,  enabled 
them  to  beat  off  not  one  but  several  oncoming 
waves  of  Germans. 

"We  had  machine  guns,  luckily  enough,"  he 
said;  "and,  my  word,  but  we  gave  the  beggars 
a  proper  drubbing!  We  piled  them  up  in  heaps 
along  the  edges  of  that  bally  old  bog.  Every- 
where along  the  Front — where  we  were  and 
everywhere  else,  too,  from  what  I  can  hear — 
they  have  outnumbered  us  four  or  five  to  one, 
but  I'm  quite  sure  we've  killed  or  wounded 
ten  of  them  for  every  man  of  ours  that  has 
been  laid  out  since  this  show  started  four  days 
ago. 

"Well,  that's  all,  except  that  this  morning 
about  ten  o'clock  I  was  hit  and  had  to  quit  and 
come  away,  because  you  see  I  wouldn't  be 
much  use  with  one  hand  out  of  commission  and 
bleeding  all  over  the  shop — would  I  now?  I'm 
sorry  to  have  to  leave  the  chaps — they  were  a 
sporting  lot;  but  since  I  had  to  stop  a  bullet 
I'm  glad  I've  got  a  nice  clean  cushy  wound.  I 
shall  be  glad  to  get  a  taste  of  Blighty  too;  I'm 
a  bit  fagged,  as  you  might  say." 

His  head  nodded  forward  on  his  chest  when 
he  got  this  far,  and  his  limbs  relaxed. 

He  protested,  though,  against  being  bundled 

[100] 


SETTING    A    TRAP     FOR    OPPORTUNITY 

off  to  bed,  saying  he  was  quite  comfortable  and 
that  his  hand  scarcely  pained  him  at  all,  but 
the  man  who  had  brought  him  took  him  away. 
As  for  Carroll  and  Green  and  me,  we  slept  that 
night,  what  sleeping  we  did,  with  our  clothes 
on  us,  ready  to  rise  and  hunt  the  wine  cellar  if 
anything  of  a  violently  unpleasant  nature  oc- 
curred over  our  heads.  During  the  hours  before 
daylight  there  was  a  spirited  spell  of  banging 
and  crashing  somewhere  in  the  town,  and  not 
so  far  away  either,  if  one  might  judge  by  the 
volume  of  the  tumult,  which  rattled  the  empty 
casement  frame  alongside  my  bed  and  made 
the  ancient  house  to  rock  and  creak;  but  when 
dawn  came  the  gables  above  us  were  still  intact 
and  we  were  enjoying  our  beauty  sleep  in  the 
calm  which  succeeded  the  gust  of  shelling  or  of 
bombing  or  whatever  it  was. 


[  101  ] 


CHAPTER  VI 
THROUGH  THE  BATTLE'S  FRONT  DOOR 

]'  MMEDIATELY  after  breakfast,  in  accord- 
ance with  a  plan  already  formulated,  we 
,  quietly  took  possession  of  one  of  those 
small  American-made  cars,  the  existence  of 
which  has  been  responsible  for  the  addition  of 
an  eighth  joke  to  the  original  seven  jokes  in 
the  world.  We  didn't  know  it  then,  but  for 
us  the  real  adventure  was  just  starting.  There 
were  four  of  us  in  the  flivver — the  driver,  a 
young  American  in  uniform,  whose  duties  were 
of  such  a  nature  that  he  travelled  on  a  roving 
commission  and  need  necessarily  report  to  none 
concerning  his  daily  movements;  and  for  pas- 
sengers, our  own  three  selves.  For  warrant  to 
fare  abroad  we  had  a  small  American  flag  painted 
on  the  glass  wind  shield,  one  extra  tire,  and  an 
order  authorising  us  to  borrow  gasoline — sim- 
ply these  and  nothing  more.  Very  unostenta- 
tiously we  rode  out  of  Soissons,  steering  a  north- 
westerly course.  We  might  not  know  exactly 
where  we  were  going  or  when  we  should  be 
back,  but  we  were  on  our  way. 

[  102] 


THROUGH    THE    BATTLE's    FRONT    DOOR 

At  the  same  time,  be  it  here  said,  there  was 
method  of  a  sort  in  our  scheme  of  things,  for 
we  were  aiming,  as  closely  as  we  might,  at  the 
point  where  approximately  the  main*  French 
command  jointed  on  to  the  right  wing  of  the 
British,  we  figuring  that  at  the  junction  place, 
where  the  overlapping  and  intermingled  areas 
of  control  met,  and  more  especially  in  a  con- 
fused period  when  one  army  was  falling  back 
and  the  other  bringing  up  its  reserves,  we  stood 
a  better  chance  in  our  credential-less  and  un- 
accredited state  of  wriggling  on  up  from  the 
back  lines  to  the  Front  than  would  elsewhere 
be  possible. 

We  reckoned  the  prospect  after  this  fashion: 
If  the  French  find  us  traversing  the  forbidden 
lands  they  may  take  it  for  granted  that  the 
British  permitted  us  to  pass.  If  we  fall  under 
the  eyes  of  British  guardians  of  the  trail  they 
are  equally  likely  to  assume  that  the  French  let 
us  through.  And  so  it  turned  out;  which  I  claim 
is  added  proof  that  the  standing  luck  of  the 
American  newspaper  reporter  on  a  difficult  as- 
signment is  not  to  be  discounted. 

In  stock  we  had  one  trump  card,  and  only 
one,  and  we  played  it  many  a  time  during  that 
somewhat  crowded  day.  All  of  us  were  in 
khaki  with  tin  helmets  upon  our  heads  and  gas 
masks  swung  over  our  shoulders.  The  heavy 
trench  coats  in  which  we  were  bundled  pre- 
vented betrayal  to  the  casual  eye  of  the  fact 
that  none  of  us  wore  badges  denoting  rank, 

[103] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

upon  our  collars  or  shoulder  straps.  Out- 
fitted thus  we  might  have  been  major  gener- 
als or  we  might  have  been  second  lieuten- 
ants of  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces. 
Who,  on  a  cursory  scrutiny  of  us,  was  to 
say? 

So  we  decided  among  ourselves  that  ours  must 
be  a  role  suggestive  of  great  personal  importance 
and  urgent  business.  Did  any  wayside  sen- 
tinel, whether  British  or  French,  move  out 
upon  the  crown  of  the  road  as  though  he  meant 
to  halt  us,  one  of  us,  with  an  authoritative  arm, 
would  wave  him  clear  of  our  path  and  we  would 
go  flitting  imperiously  by  as  though  the  officious- 
ness  of  underlings  roused  in  us  only  a  passing 
annoyance.  It  proved  a  good  trick.  It  may 
never  work  again  in  this  war,  but  I  bear  witness 
that  it  has  worked  once. 

In  the  very  first  leg  of  this  expedition  good 
old  Madame  Bonnea venture  stood  our  friend. 
The  River  Aisne  skirts  the  city  of  Soissons. 
At  the  far  side  of  the  bridge,  spanning  the 
stream,  which  bridge  we  must  cross,  stood  a 
French  noncom,  charged,  as  we  knew,  with  the 
duty  of  examining  the  passes  of  those  outbound. 
If  we  disregarded  his  summons  to  halt,  com- 
plications of  a  painful  nature  would  undoubtedly 
ensue.  But  as  the  car  slowed  up,  all  of  us  with 
our  fingers  figuratively  crossed,  he  either  recog- 
nised the  driver  as  one  who  passed  him  often 
or  was  impressed  by  our  bogusly  impressive 
mien,  or  possibly  accepted  the  painted  flag  on 

[  104  ] 


THROUGH    THE    BATTLERS    FRONT    DOOR 

Tin  Lizzie's  weather-beaten  countenance  as 
warrant  of  our  authenticity. 

As  he  waved  to  us  to  proceed  and  then  came 
to  a  salute,  we,  returning  the  salute  in  due 
form,  were  uttering  three  silent  but  nonethe- 
less vehement  cheers.  I  think  we  also  shook 
hands.  We  were  past  the  first  and  by  long 
side  the  most  formidable  barrier.  The  farther  we 
proceeded  toward  the  battle  the  greater  would 
be  our  chances  of  proceeding,  it  being  gen- 
erally assumed  that  no  one  gets  very  deeply 
into  the  district  of  active  hostilities  unless  he 
has  a  proper  errand  there  and  has  proved  it  to 
the  satisfaction  of  the  highway  warders  behind. 

Through  several  villages  that  were  reduced 
by  shell  fire  to  litter  heaps  and  tenanted  only 
by  detachments  of  French  soldiers  we  passed. 
Next  we  skirted  up  the  sides  of  a  steep  hill  and 
rounded  the  crest  to  where,  spread  out  before 
our  eyes,  was  a  glorious  panorama  of  the  ter- 
rain below  and  beyond. 

We  drew  in  our  breaths.  Each  one  of  us  had 
seen  something  of  the  panoply  of  warfare  in 
the  making,  but  nothing  in  my  own  experience 
since  Belgium  in  1914  had  equalled  this.  All 
the  world  appeared  to  have  put  on  cartridge 
belts  and  gone  to  war.  As  far  as  the  eye  could 
reach,  away  off  yonder  to  where  sky  line  and 
earth  line  met  behind  the  dust  screen,  cavalry, 
artillery,  infantry,  supply  trains,  munition 
trains,  and  all  imaginable  branches  of  the 
portable  machinery  of  an   army  were  in  sight 

[105] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

and  in  motion.  Their  masses  hid  the  earth 
with  a  shifting  pattern  as  though  a  vast  blue- 
grey  carpet  were  magically  weaving  itself. 
Overhead,  singly,  in  pairs  and  in  formations, 
like  flights  of  wild  fowl,  the  scout  planes,  the 
observation  planes  and  the  battle  planes  went 
winging.  They  were  like  silver  gulls  escorting 
limitless  schools  of  porpoise  through  placid 
waters. 

Usually  there  is  a  seemingly  interminable 
confusion  in  the  vision  of  a  great  force  upon 
the  forward  go.  To  the  lay  eye  it  appears  that 
the  whole  movement  has  got  itself  inextricably 
snarled.  This  line  travels  one  course,  that  line 
goes  in  exactly  the  opposite  direction,  a  third 
one  is  bisecting  the  first  two  at  cross  angles. 
But  here  one  great  compelling  influence  was 
sending  all  the  units  forward  along  a  common 
current.  The  heavy  vehicles  held  to  the  roads 
which  threaded  the  plain;  the  infantry  took 
short  cuts  across  lots,  as  it  were;  the  cavalry 
traversed  the  fields  and  penetrated  the  occa- 
sional thickets;  the  sky  craft  trod  the  alleys  of 
the  air — but  they  all  headed  toward  the  same 
unseen  goal.  There  was  no  doubt  about  it — 
France  was  hurrying  up  a  most  splendid  army 
to  reenforce  the  hard-pressed  defenders  of 
French  soil,  where  the  Hun  pushed  against  the 
line  of  the  inward-bending  and  battered  but 
yet  unbroken  British  battalions. 

We  coasted  down  off  the  heights  into  the 
plateau,  and  now  as  we  came  in  among  them 

[106] 


THROUGH    THE    BATTLE's    FRONT    DOOR 

we  had  opportunity  for  appraising  the  temper 
of  those  men  hurrying  on  their  forward  march 
to  the  kilHng  pits.  Who  says  France  is  war 
wearied  or  that  her  sons  are  tired  of  fighting? 
No  suggestion  was  there  here  of  dumb  oxen 
driven  to  slaughter.  Why,  these  men  were  like 
bridegrooms  bound  for  the  marriage  feast. 
They  sang  as  they  marched  or  as  they  rode. 
Usually  what  they  sang  was  a  snatch  of  some 
rollicking  chanson,  and  through  the  dirt  masks 
they  grinned  into  our  faces  as  we  went  slithering 

There  were  hails  and  friendly  gestures  for 
us.  It  might  be  a  boy  private  with  a  sprig  of 
early  spring  wild  flowers  jauntily  stuck  in  his 
cap  who  waved  at  us.  It  might  be  a  cook  bal- 
ancing himself  on  the  tailboard  of  a  travelling 
field  kitchen  who  raised  a  sweaty  visage  from 
his  steaming  soup  caldron  and  made  friendly 
circles  in  the  air  with  a  dripping  iron  instrument 
that  was  too  big  for  a  spoon  and  too  small  for 
a  spade;  or  it  might  be  a  gunner  on  a  bouncing 
ammunition  truck  with  enough  of  potential 
death  and  disaster  bestowed  under  his  sprawled 
legs  to  blow  him  and,  incidentally,  us  into  ten 
million  smithereens  if  ever  it  went  off. 

Kilometre  after  kilometre  we  skihooted 
through  the  press,  and  it  was  a  comic  thing  to 
see  how  a  plodding  regiment  would  swing  over 
or  a  battery  would  bounce  and  jolt  off  the 
fairway  into  the  edges  of  the  ditch  at  the  in- 
sistent  toot-toot   of   our   penny   whistle   of   a 

[  107  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

horn  to  let  us  by.  It  made  one  think  of  whales 
making  room  in  a  narrow  tideway  for  an  im- 
pudent black  minnow  to  pass.  And  always 
there  was  the  drone  of  the  questing  aeroplanes 
overhead  and  the  thunderous  roaring  of  the 
guns  in  front.  We  overtook  one  train  of  supply 
trucks  with  the  markings  of  the  U.  S.  A.  and 
manned  by  dusty  lads  in  the  khaki  fustian  of 
Yankeeland — evidence  that  at  least  one  arm 
of  our  service  would  have  a  hand  in  the  epochal 
task  confronting  our  allies.  All  the  rest  of  it 
was  French. 

For  us  there  was  no  halt  until  we  reached 
Blerencourt.  Now  this  place  was  a  place 
having  a  particular  interest  for  us,  since  it  was 
at  Blerencourt  that  the  organisation  known  as 
the  American  Fund  for  French  Wounded, 
which  is  headed  by  Miss  Anne  Morgan  and 
which  has  for  its  field  personnel  American  wom- 
en exclusively,  had  during  the  past  nine  months 
centred  its  principal  activities. 

In  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  now  evacuated 
of  almost  all  its  civilian  residents,  stand  the 
massive  stone  gateways  and  the  dried  moat 
of  the  magnificent  chateau  of  Blerencourt, 
which  was  destroyed  by  the  peasants  in  the  time 
of  the  Terror  and  never  rebuilt.  What  remains 
constitutes  one  of  the  most  picturesque  physical 
reminders  of  the  French  Revolution  that  is 
to  be  found  in  the  country  to-day.  We  rode 
under  the  arched  stone  portals — and  lo,  it  was 
almost  as  though  we  had  come  into  the  midst 

[108] 


THROUGH    THE    BATTLE's    FRONT    DOOR 

of  a  smart  real-estate  development  somewhere 
on  Long  Island  within  easy  communicating  dis- 
tance of  New  York  City. 

French  francs,  provided  by  the  state,  and 
American  dollars,  donated  by  the  folks  back 
home,  had  been  used  under  American  super- 
vision to  construct  a  model  colony  upon  the 
exact  site  of  the  ancient  castle  of  some  vanished 
noble  family  of  the  old  regime.  There  was  a 
model  barracks,  a  model  dormitory,  a  model 
schoolhouse,  two  model  cottages  and  an  oflSce 
building  that  was  a  model  among  models — all 
built  of  planking,  all  glistening  and  smart  with 
fresh  paint,  all  with  neat  doorsteps  in  front  of 
them  and  trim  flower  plots  and  vegetable  gar- 
dens about  them.  There  was  a  chicken  house 
and  a  chicken  run,  dotted  with  the  shapes  of 
plump  fowls.  There  was  a  storeroom  piled 
high  with  clothing  and  food  sent  over  from 
America  to  the  A.  F.  F.  W.  for  distribution 
among  destitute  natives  of  the  devastated  dis- 
tricts, of  which  this,  until  a  year  ago,  had  been 
the  centre. 

These  incongruously  modern  structures  snug- 
gled right  up  under  the  venerable  walls  of  the 
battlements.  Indeed  several  of  the  buildings 
were  cunningly  built  into  the  ruins,  so  that 
on  one  side  the  composite  edifice  would  show  a 
withered  stone  face,  with  patches  of  furze 
growing  in  the  chinks  of  the  crumbled  masonry 
like  moles  on  the  forehead  of  a  withered  crone, 
and  on  the  other  would  present  a  view  of  a 

[  109  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

smart  cottage  with  a  varnished  shingle  roof  and 
a  painted  front  door  which  apparently  had  just 
arrived  from  some  planing  mill  in  the  States. 
Underneath  the  floor  was  a  cellar  four  hundred 
years  old,  but  the  curtains  in  the  window  had 
seemingly  been  cut  and  stitched  only  yesterday. 
Somehow,  though,  the  blended  effect  was  im- 
mensely effective.  It  made  me  think  of  Home- 
dale-on-the-Sound  grafted  upon  a  background 
of  Louis  the  Grand;  and  for  a  fact  that  was 
exactly  what  it  was. 

This  creation,  representing  as  it  did  nine 
months  of  hard  work  on  the  part  of  devoted 
American  women,  had  been  closed  only  the 
day  before.  It  stayed  in  operation  until  it 
seemed  probable  that  the  German  legions  might 
penetrate  this  far  south  in  their  effort  to  ford 
the  River  Oise.  The  little  pupils  of  the  kinder- 
garten had  been  sent  away  in  trucks,  the  main 
dormitory  had  been  turned  into  a  temporary 
resting  place  for  refugees,  and  the  American 
ranges  in  the  kitchen  had  done  valiant  service 
in  the  cooking  of  hot  meals  for  exhausted  women 
and  children  tramping  in  from  the  north  and 
west.  Before  the  managers  and  teachers  left 
at  dusk  of  the  preceding  evenmg  two  crippled 
French  soldiers,  specially  detailed  for  work 
here  by  the  government,  had  been  assigned  to 
place  vessels  of  kerosene  in  each  building,  with 
instructions  to  fire  the  oil  at  the  first  signs  of 
approaching  Germans. 

The  cans  of  inflammables  were  still  in  their 

[110] 


THROUGH    THE    BATTLE's    FRONT    DOOR 

places  when  we  arrived  and  the  maimed  watch- 
men, one  of  them  a  one-armed  man  and  the 
other  a  one-legged,  had  camped  all  night  on 
the  premises  ready  on  warning  to  apply  the 
torch  and  destroy  this  frontier  outpost  of  Amer- 
ican charity  and  American  efficiency.  But  in 
the  forenoon  word  was  come  that  the  enemy 
had  been  brought  to  bay  seven  miles  away  and 
that  he  might  not  break  through  the  British- 
French  line.  He  did  break  through,  but  that  is 
another  story.  So  Mrs.  Dike,  of  New  York, 
and  Miss  Blagden,  of  Philadelphia,  two  of  Miss 
Morgan's  assistants,  had  motored  in  from  be- 
low, filled  with  thanksgiving  that  the  patient 
work  of  their  hands  and  their  hearts  would 
almost  certainly  be  spared. 

While  Mrs.  Dike,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  was 
telling  us  of  the  things  that  had  been  accom- 
plished here  and  while  the  troopers  poured  in 
unceasing  streams  along  the  main  road  beyond 
the  gateway,  a  handful  of  belated  refugees 
crept  in  under  the  weathered  armorial  bearings 
on  the  keystone  of  the  archway,  to  be  fed  and 
cared  for  and  then  sent  along  in  the  first  empty 
truck  that  came  by  going  toward  Soissons. 

In  this  group  of  newcomers  was  an  elderly 
little  man  in  a  worn  high  hat  and  a  long  frock 
coat  with  facings  of  white  dust  upon  its  shiny 
seams,  who  looked  as  though  he  might  be  the 
mayor  of  some  inconsequential  village.  He 
carried  two  bulging  valises  and  a  huge  um- 
brella.   With  him  was  his  wife,  and  she  had  in 

[111] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

one  hand  a  cage  housing  two  frightened  canaries 
and  under  the  other  arm  a  fat  grey  tabby  cat 
which  bhnked  its  shtted  eyes  contentedly. 

The  most  pitiable  figure  of  them  all  to  my 
way  of  thinking  was  an  old  woman — yes,  a 
very  old  woman — she  must  have  been  all  of 
eighty.  Alongside  one  of  the  buildings  I  came 
upon  her  sitting  in  a  huddle  of  her  most  treas- 
ured possessions.  She  was  bent  forward,  with 
her  gnarled  hands  folded  in  the  lap  of  her  dress, 
which  was  silk  and  shiny,  for  naturally  when 
she  fled  from  her  home  she  had  put  on  her  back 
the  best  that  she  o^v^Tied.  Under  the  cope  of  a 
queer  little  old  black  bonnet  w^th  faded  purple 
cloth  flowers  upon  it  her  scanty  hair  lay  in 
thin  neat  folds,  as  white  and  as  soft  as  silk  floss. 
Her  feet  in  stiff,  new,  black  shoes  showed  be- 
neath her  broad  skirts.  Her  face,  caving  in 
about  the  mouth  where  her  teeth  were  gone  and 
all  crosshatched  with  wrinkles,  was  a  sweet, 
kindly,  most  gentle  old  face — the  kind  of  face 
that  we  like  to  think  our  dead-and-gone  grand- 
mothers must  have  had. 

She  sat  there  ever  so  patiently  in  the  soft 
sunlight,  waiting  for  the  truck  which  would 
carry  her  away  to  some  strange  place  among 
stranger  folk.  When  I  drew  near  to  her,  wishing 
with  all  my  heart  that  I  knew  enough  of  her 
tongue  to  express  to  her  some  of  the  thoughts 
I  was  thinking,  she  looked  up  at  me  and  smiled 
a  friendly  little  smile,  and  then  raising  her 
hands  in  a  gesture  of  resignation  dropped  them 

[112] 


THROUGH    THE    BATTLe's    FRONT    DOOR 

again  in  her  lap.  But  it  was  only  with  her  lips 
that  she  smiled,  for  all  the  time  her  chin  was 
quivering  and  her  faded  old  blue  eyes  were  brim- 
ming with  a  sorrow  that  was  past  telling  in 
words. 

She  still  sat  there  as  we  got  into  our  car  and 
drove  off  toward  the  battle.  Looking  back,  the 
last  thing  I  saw  before  we  rounded  the  corner 
of  the  wall  was  her  small  black  shape  vivid  in 
the  sunshine.  And  I  told  myself  that  if  I  were 
an  artist  seeking  to  put  upon  canvas  an  image 
that  would  typify  and  sum  up  the  spirit  of 
embattled  France  to-day  I  would  not  paint  a 
picture  of  a  wounded  boy  soldier;  nor  yet  one 
of  a  winged  angel  form  bearing  a  naked  sword; 
nor  yet  one  of  the  full-throated  cock  of  France, 
crowing  his  proud  defiance.  I  would  paint  a 
picture  of  that  brave  little  old  withered  woman, 
with  the  lips  that  smiled  and  the  chin  that  quiv- 
ered the  while  she  smiled. 


[lis] 


CHAPTER  VII 
AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 


WHEN  the  last  preceding  chapter  of 
mine  ended  I  had  reached  a  point 
in  the  narrative  where  our  Httle 
party  of  four,  travelhng  in  our 
own  little  tin  flivverette,  were  just  leaving 
Blerincourt,  being  bound  still  farther  west  and 
aiming,  if  our  abiding  luck  held  out,  to  reach 
the  front  of  the  Front — which,  I  may  add,  we 
did. 

To  be  exact  we  were  lea\'ing  not  one  Blerin- 
court but  three.  First,  Blerincourt,  the  town, 
with  its  huddle  of  villagers'  homes,  housing  at 
this  moment  only  French  troopers  and  ex- 
hausted refugees ;  second,  Blerincourt,  the  castle, 
a  mouldering  relic  of  a  great  house,  testifying 
by  its  massive  empty  walls  and  its  tottering 
ruin  of  a  gateway  to  the  fury  which  laid  hold 
on  the  peasants  of  these  parts  in  the  days  of 
the  Terror;  and,  third,  Blerincourt,  the  model 
colony  of  model  cottages,  which  for  us  held  the 
most  personal  interest,  since  it  was  here  the 
American  women  of  the  American  Fund  for 

[114] 


AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 

French  Wounded  had  during  the  previous  nine 
months  centred  their  activities  relating  to  the 
repopulating  of  districts  in  the  Aisne  country, 
now  for  the  second  time  evacuated  and  given 
over  again  to  the  savage  mahce  of  the  boche. 

Behind  us  as  we  swung  into  the  main  high- 
way lay  this  grouped  composition  of  the 
wrecked  chateau,  the  tiny  old  houses  of  weath- 
ered grey  stone  and  the  little  frame  domiciles, 
smart  and  glistening  with  fresh  paint  and  fresh 
varnishing.  Before  us,  within  a  space  of  time 
and  distance  to  be  spanned  by  not  more  than 
half  an  hour  of  steady  riding,  was  somewhere 
the  problematical  doorway  through  which  we 
hoped  to  pass  into  the  forward  lines  of  that 
battle  which  the  historians  of  the  future,  I  dare 
say,  will  call  merely  the  Great  Battle,  knowing 
their  readers  require  no  added  phraseology  to 
distinguish  it  from  the  lesser  engagements  of 
this  war — or  in  fact  of  any  war. 

We  did  not  ask  our  way  of  any  whom  we 
met,  either  of  those  going  ahead  of  us  or  those 
coming  back  in  counter  streams.  To  begin 
with,  we  deemed  it  inexpedient  to  halt  long 
enough  to  give  to  any  person  in  authority  a 
chance  for  questioning  the  validity  of  our 
present  mission,  since,  as  I  already  have  ex- 
plained, we  carried  no  passes  qualifying  us  to 
traverse  this  area;  and  besides  there  was  no 
need  to  ask.  The  route  was  marked  for  us  by 
signs  and  sounds  without  number,  plainer  than 
any  mileposts  could  have  been :  By  the  columns 

[115] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

of  Frenchmen  hurrying  up  to  reenforce  the 
decimated  British  who  until  now,  at  odds  of 
one  to  five,  had  borne  the  buffets  of  the  tre- 
mendous German  onslaught;  by  the  never- 
ending,  never-slackening  roar  of  the  heavy 
guns;  by  the  cloud  of  dust  and  powder,  forming 
a  wall  against  two  sides  of  the  horizon,  which 
mounted  upward  to  mingle  its  hazes  with  the 
hazes  of  the  soft  spring  afternoon;  by  the  thin 
trickling  lines  of  light  casualty  cases,  "walking 
wounded,"  in  the  vernacular  of  the  Medical 
Corps — meaning  by  that  men  who,  having  had 
first-aid  bandages  applied  to  their  hurts  at  for- 
ward casualty  stations,  were  tramping  rearward 
to  find  accommodations  for  themselves  at  field 
hospitals  miles  away. 

At  once  we  were  in  a  maze  of  traffic  to  be 
likened  to  the  conditions  commonly  prevalent 
on  lower  Fifth  Avenue  in  the  height  of  the 
Christmas-shopping  season,  but  with  two  dis- 
tinctions: Here  on  this  chalk-white  highroad 
the  movement,  nearly  all  of  it,  was  in  one  direc- 
tion; and  instead  of  omnibuses,  delivery  vans, 
carriages  and  private  automobiles,  this  vast 
caravansary  was  made  up  of  soldiers  afoot,  sol- 
diers mounted  and  soldiers  riding;  of  batteries, 
horse  drawn  and  motor  drawn;  of  pontoon 
bridges  in  segments;  of  wagon  trains,  baggage 
trains,  provision  trains  and  munition  trains; 
of  field  telephone,  field  telegraph  and  field  wire- 
less outfits  upon  wheels;  of  all  the  transportable 
impedimenta  and  all  the  myriad  items  of  mov- 

[116] 


AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 

able  machinery  pertaining  to  the  largest  army 
that  has  crossed  a  corner  of  France  since  the 
days  of  the  first  great  invasion  more  than  three 
and  a  half  years  before. 

There  were  ambulances  past  counting;  there 
were  big  covered  camions  in  numbers  sufficient 
to  fit  out  a  thousand  circuses;  there  were  horses 
and  donkeys  and  mules  of  all  the  known  sizes 
and  colours;  there  were  so  many  human  shapes 
in  uniforms  of  horizon  blue  that  the  eye  grew 
wear}^  and  the  brain  rebelled  at  the  task  of 
trying,  even  approximately,  to  compute  esti- 
mates of  the  total  strength  of  the  man  power 
here  focussed. 

Through  all  this,  weaving  in  and  out,  our 
impudent  little  black  bug  of  a  car  scuttled 
along,  with  its  puny  horn  honking  a  constant 
and  insolent  demand  for  clear  passage.  At  a 
faster  gait  than  anything  in  sight  except  the 
cruising  aeroplanes  above,  we  progressed  upon 
our  way,  with  none  to  halt  us  and  none  to 
turn  us  back.  Where  the  dust  hung  especially 
thick  at  a  crossroads  set  in  the  midst  of  the 
wide  plain  we  almost  struck  three  pedestrians 
who  seemingly  did  not  heed  our  hooted  warning 
or  take  notice  of  it  until  we  were  right  upon 
them.  As  they  jumped  nimbly  for  the  ditch 
we  could  see  that  all  these  had  staff  markings 
at  their  throats,  and  that  one,  the  eldest  of  the 
three,  a  stoutish  gentleman  with  a  short  grizzled 
beard,  wore  three  stars  in  a  triangle  upon  his 
collar.    Tin  Lizzie  had  almost  achieved  the  dis- 

[117] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

tinction  for  herself  of  having  run  down  a  major 
general  of  France. 

We  did  not  stop,  though,  to  offer  apologies  or 
explanations.  With  rare  sagacity  our  driver 
threw  her  wide  open  and  darted  into  the  fog, 
to  take  temporary  shelter  behind  a  huge  supply 
wagon,  which  vehicle  we  followed  for  a  while 
after  the  fashion  of  a  new-foaled  colt  trailing 
its  dam. 

Proofs  began  to  multiply  that  we  were  near- 
ing  the  zone  of  live  combat.  Until  now  the 
only  British  soldiers  we  had  seen  were  slightly 
wounded  men  bound  afoot  for  the  rear.  All  at 
once  we  found  ourselves  passing  half  a  company 
of  khaki-clad  Britishers  who  travelled  across  a 
field  over  a  course  parallel  to  the  one  we  were 
taking  and  who  disappeared  in  a  hazel  copse 
beyond.  Rifle  firing  could  be  heard  somewhere 
on  the  far  side  of  the  thicket.  At  a  barked 
command  from  an  officer  who  clattered  up  on 
horseback  a  battery  of  those  doughty  little 
seventy -fives,  which  the  French  cherish  so 
highly,  and  with  such  just  cause,  was  leaving 
the  road  and  taking  station  in  a  green  meadow 
where  the  timid  little  wild  flowers  of  a  mild 
March  showed  purple  and  yellow  in  the  rutted 
and  trampled  grass. 

With  marvellous  haste  the  thing  w^as  accom- 
plished almost  instantly.  The  first  gun  of  the 
five  squatted  in  the  field  with  its  nozzle  slanting 
toward  the  northwest,  and  behind  it  its  four 
companions  stood,  all  with  their  short  noses 

[118] 


AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 

pointing  at  precisely  the  same  angle,  like  bird 
dogs  on  a  back  stand.  Suddenly  they  did  what 
well-broken  bird  dogs  never  do — they  barked, 
one  after  the  other.  Almost  before  the  whining 
whistle  of  the  shells  had  died  away  the  gunners 
were  moving  their  pieces  to  a  point  closer  up 
behind  a  screen  of  poplars  and  sending  a 
second  yelping  salvo  of  shots  toward  an  unseen 
target. 

We  became  aware  that  the  component  units 
of  the  army  were  now  quitting  the  roadway  to 
take  positions  in  the  back  lines.  Indeed  those 
back  lines  formed  themselves  while  we  watched. 
One  battery  after  another  swung  off  to  the  right 
or  to  the  left  and  came  into  alignment,  so  that 
soon  we  rode  between  double  rows  of  halted 
guns.  With  our  canes  we  could  have  touched 
the  artillerymen  piling  heaps  of  projectiles  in 
convenient  hollows  in  the  earth  close  up  to  the 
edges  of  the  road.  Big  covered  wains  dis- 
charged dusty  infantrymen,  who,  pausing  only 
long  enough  to  unbuckle  their  packs  from  their 
shoulders  and  throw  them  under  the  hoods  of 
the  wagons,  went  at  a  shambling  half-trot 
through  the  meadow.  Cavalrymen,  not  dis- 
mounted, as  they  had  mainly  been  during  these 
dragging  winter  months  of  warfare  that  was 
stationary  and  static,  but  with  their  booted 
feet  once  more  in  their  stirrups,  cantered  off, 
bound  presumably  for  the  thin  woodlands 
which  rimmed  the  plateau  where  the  terrain 
broke  away  to  the  banks  of  the  River  Oise. 

[119] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

Here  again  at  last  was  war  in  the  open,  as 
different  from  battle  in  the  trenches  as  football 
is  from  trap  shooting.  The  action  of  it  was 
spread  out  before  one's  eyes,  not  masked  in 
mud  ambuscades.  Each  instant  our  eves  be- 
held  some  new  and  stirring  picture,  standing 
out  by  reason  of  its  swift  vigour  from  the 
vaster  panorama  of  which  it  was  a  part.  What 
I  had  seen  of  battle  formations  in  the  preceding 
three  weeks  had  made  me  think  mainly  of  sub- 
way diggin's  or  of  construction  work  for  a 
new  railroad  or  of  engineering  operations  in 
connection  with  a  dam,  sav,  or  a  dike.  What 
I  saw  now  most  vividly  suggested  old-time 
battle  pictures  by  Meissonier  or  Detaille.  War, 
for  the  moment  at  least,  had  gone  back  to  the 
aspect  which  marked  it  before  both  sides  dug 
themselves  in  to  play  the  game  of  counter- 
blasting  with  artillery  and  nibbling  the  foe's 
toes  with  raids  and  small  forays. 

Of  another  thing  we  were  likewise  aware,  and 
the  realisation  of  the  fact  cheered  us  mightily. 
Among  the  blue  uniforms  of  the  French  the 
greenish  buff  of  the  British  showed  in  patches 
of  contrasting  colour  that  steadily  increased  in 
size  and  frequency.  By  rare  good  luck  we  had 
entered  the  advanced  positions  at  the  identical 
place  for  which,  blindly,  we  had  been  seeking — 
the  place  where  the  most  westerly  sector  of  the 
French  left  wing  touched  the  most  easterly 
sector  of  the  British  right  wing;  and  better 
than  that,  the  place  where  the  French  strength 

[  120] 


AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 

hurrying  up  to  reenforce  and  if  need  be  replace 
decimated  divisions  of  their  alKes  was  joined 
on  to  and  fused  in  with  the  retiring  British 
Army,  which,  during  the  preceding  three  days, 
had  sustained  the  main  force  of  the  German 
offensive.  It  was  here  if  anywhere  that  we 
could  count  with  the  best  prospects  of  success 
upon  boring  straight  through  to  the  Front,  the 
reason  being  that  the  French  might  assume  the 
British  had  given  us  passage  and  the  British 
might  assume  the  French  had  let  us  by. 

There  were  perhaps  three  more  miles  of  brisk 
travelling  for  us,  during  which  I  am  sure  that 
I  saw  more  than  ever  I  have  seen  in  any  three 
miles  that  ever  I  traversed  in  my  life;  and  at 
the  end  of  that  stretch  we  could  tell  that  we 
had  well-nigh  outrun  the  forward  crest  of  the 
French  ground  swell  and  had  come  into  the 
narrower  backwash  of  the  British  retreat.  A 
retreat  of  sorts  it  may  have  been,  but  a  rout 
it  most  assuredly  was  not.  We  saw  companies 
reduced  to  the  strength  of  ten  or  twelve  or 
twentv  men  under  command  of  noncommis- 
sioned  officers  or  possibly  of  a  single  lieutenant. 
We  saw  individual  privates  and  we  saw  privates 
in  squads  of  two  or  three  or  half  a  dozen  men, 
who  in  the  terrific  fighting  had  become  sepa- 
rated from  a  command,  which  possibly  had  been 
scattered  but  which  it  was  more  likely  had  been 
practically  wiped  out.  Such  men  were  not 
stragglers,  nor  were  they  malingerers;  they 
were  survivors,  atoms  flung  backward  out  of 

[121] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

the  raging  inferno  which  had  swallowed  up 
whole  regiments  and  whole  brigades. 

And  we  took  note  that  every  single  man  of 
these  broken  and  decimated  detachments  was  in 
good  humour,  though  dog  tired;  and  that  every 
single  one  of  them  had  kept  his  accoutrements 
and  his  rifle;  and  that  every  single  one  of 
them,  whether  moving  under  orders  or  acting 
upon  his  own  initiative,  was  intent  upon  just 
two  things  and  two  things  only — to  get  back  into 
the  maelstrom  from  which  temporarily  he  had 
been  spewed  forth,  and  pump  more  lead  into  the 
living  tidal  wave  of  grey  coats.  Some  that  we 
overtook  were  singing,  and  singing  lustily  too. 
Than  this  no  man  could  ask  to  see  a  finer 
spectacle  of  fortitude,  of  pluck  and  of  discipline, 
and  I  am  sure  that  in  his  heart  each  one  of  us, 
while  having  no  doubt  of  the  outcome  of  the 
fiery  test,  prayed  that  our  own  soldiers,  when 
their  time  of  trial  by  battle  came,  might  under 
reverses  and  under  punishment  acquit  them- 
selves as  well  as  had  these  British  veterans, 
Yorkshire  and  Bedfordshire  and  Canada,  who 
came  trudging  along  behind  us,  swallowing  our 
dust.  What  impressed  us  as  most  significant 
of  all  was  that  only  once  that  day  did  we  see  a 
scrap  of  personal  equipment  that  had  been  cast 
aside.  This  was  a  cartridge  belt  of  English 
make,  with  its  pouches  empty  and  its  tough 
leather  torn  almost  in  two,  lying  like  a  broken- 
backed  brown  snake  in  a  ditch. 

Already  from  wounded  English  soldiers  and 

[122] 


AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 

from  exhausted  English  hospital  workers  whom 
we  had  seen  back  in  Soissons  we  comprehended 
a  measure  of  appreciation  of  what  these  bat- 
tered fragments  of  the  forces  had  been  called 
upon  to  endure  during  four  days  and  five 
nights.  We  knew  as  surely  as  though  we  had 
stopped  to  take  down  the  story  of  each  one  of 
the  wearied,  cheerful,  resolute  chaps,  that  they 
had  their  fill  of  killing  the  enemy  and  of  seeing 
their  mates  about  them  blown  to  bits  by  high 
explosives  or  mowed  down  by  rifle  fire.  I  re- 
called what  a  bedraggled  young  surgeon,  a 
Highlander  by  his  accent,  had  said  the  night 
before : 

"I  crave  never  to  pass  through  this  experi- 
ence again.  I  have  seen  so  much  of  death  since 
this  battle  started  that  I  have  in  me  now  con- 
tempt not  only  for  death  but  for  life  too.  I 
thought  last  year  on  the  Somme  I  saw  real 
fighting.  Man,  it  was  but  child's  play  to  what 
I  saw  the  day  before  yesterday! 

"From  the  casualty  dressing  post  where  I 
was  on  duty  I  could  see  the  fighting  spread  out 
before  me  like  a  cinema  show.  For  our  shelter 
— we  were  in  a  concrete  dugout — was  in  the 
side  of  a  hill  with  a  wide  sweep  of  lowland 
below  and  beyond  us,  and  it  was  here  in  this 
valley  that  the  Germans  came  at  our  people. 
Between  jobs  in  the  operating  theatre — and 
God  knows  we  had  enough  of  them — I  would 
slip  out  for  a  breath  of  air,  and  then  I  could 
watch  through  my  glasses  what  went  on. 

[  123  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

*'In  wave  after  wave  the  Germans  came  on, 
marching  close  together  in  numbers  incredible. 
They  were  Hke  ants;  they  were  Hke  flies;  Hke 
swarming  grasshoppers.  At  first  they  tried  a 
frontal  attack  against  our  trenches,  but  even 
the  Germans,  driven  on  as  they  must  have 
been  like  cattle  to  the  slaughter,  couldn't  stand 
what  they  got  there.  Within  two  hours  they 
charged  three  times!  Each  time  they  fell  back 
again,  and  each  time  they  left  their  dead  lying 
so  thickly  behind  that  finally  the  ground 
seemed  as  though  it  were  covered  with  a  grey 
carpet. 

"That  happened  in  the  first  day  of  their 
drive  against  our  part  of  the  line,  which  was 
the  third  line  back,  the  two  front  lines  having 
already  been  taken  by  them.  So  on  the  next 
day,  which  was  the  day  before  yesterday,  they 
worked  their  way  round  to  the  south  a  bit  and 
tried  a  flanking  advance.  Then  it  was  I  saw 
this,  just  as  I'm  telling  it  to  you.  I  saw  them 
caught  by  our  machine-gun  fire  and  piled  up, 
heap  on  heap,  until  there  was  a  windrow  of 
them  before  the  British  trenches  that  must  have 
been  six  feet  high. 

"They  went  back,  but  they  came  again  and 
again,  and  they  kept  on  coming.  They  climbed 
right  over  that  wall  of  their  own  dead — I  my- 
self watched  them  scrambling  up  among  the 
bodies^and  they  slid  down  on  the  other  side 
and  ran  right  into  the  wire  entanglements, 
where  those  of  them  that  were  killed  hung  in 

[124] 


AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 

the  wires  like  garments  drying  on  a  line.  They 
died  there  in  such  numbers  that  they  fairly 
clogged  the  wires.  And  still  they  kept  on 
coming. 

*'When  our  line  began  to  bend  in,  farther 
away  to  the  west,  we  got  orders  to  evacuate 
the  station;  and  the  men  in  the  trenches  where 
I  had  seen  the  fighting  got  orders — what  were 
left  of  them — to  fall  back  too.  They  were 
Scotchmen,  these  laddies,  and  they  were  fairly 
mad  with  the  fighting.  They  didn't  want  to  go, 
and  they  refused  to  go.  I'm  told  by  reliable 
witnesses  that  their  officers  had  almost  to  use 
force  against  them — not  to  make  them  keep  on 
fighting  but  to  make  them  quit  fighting." 

He  looked  into  the  coals  of  the  wood  fire  and 
shivered. 

"Man,  it's  not  war  any  more;  it's  just  plain 
slaughter.  Mark  my  word — there'll  never  be 
another  war  such  as  this  one  has  been  or  an- 
other battle  such  as  the  one  that  still  goes  on 
yonder.  'Tis  not  in  flesh  and  blood  to  endure 
its  repetition  once  the  hate  has  been  cooled  by 
a  taste  of  peace." 

The  men  about  us  for  the  most  part  must 
have  taken  part  as  actors  in  scenes  such  as  the 
young  surgeon  had  described  as  an  onlooker. 
But  about  them  there  was  no  sign  of  reluctance 
or  of  surcease.  We  realised  as  thoroughly  as 
though  we  had  been  eyewitnesses  to  their  con- 
duct that  they  had  carried  on  like  brave  men; 
and  without  being  told  we  realised,  too,  that 

[125] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

they  were  made  of  the  stuff  which  keeps  carry- 
ing on  as  long  as  there  is  life  left  in  it.  They 
were  of  the  breed  of  the  bulldog,  and  clean 
strain,  at  that. 

Frenchmen  grew  fewer  in  number  along  the 
route  we  travelled;  Britishers  became  more 
and  more  numerous.  Where  byways  crossed 
the  highroad  and  in  wrecked  villages  the  British 
already  had  posted  military  policemen  to  guide 
the  traffic  and  point  out  the  proper  directions 
to  bodies  of  men  passing  through.  Those  men 
stood  in  midroad  giving  their  orders  as  calmly 
and  as  crisply  as  though  they  had  been  bobbies 
on  the  Strand.  Even  in  this  emergency  John 
Bull's  military  system  did  not  disintegrate.  As 
long  as  the  organism  lasted  the  organisation 
would  last  too.  Nowhere  was  there  any  sug- 
gestion of  confusion  or  conflict  of  will.  I  am 
prone  to  think  that  in  the  years  to  come  the 
chief  outstanding  fact  about  the  great  spring 
offensive  of  1918  will  be  not  the  way  the  Ger- 
mans came  forward  but  the  way  in  which  the 
British  fell  back. 

Until  now  we  had  seen  only  British  foot 
soldiers,  and  once  or  twice  officers  in  motor 
cars  or  on  horseback;  but  soon  we  came  upon 
a  battery  of  British  light  artillery.  It  was 
jolting  across  muddy  pasture  among  the  stumps 
of  apple  trees  which  the  Germans  with  malig- 
nant thoroughness  had  felled  before  their  big 
retreat  of  twelve  months  before.  The  place 
had  been  an  orchard  once.    Now  it  was  merely 

[  126] 


AT  THE  FRONT  OF  THE  FRONT 

SO  much  waste  land,  dedicated  to  uselessness 
by  efficiency  and  kultur.  The  trees,  as  we 
could  see,  had  not  been  blown  down  by  shell 
fire  or  hewn  down  with  axes.  They  had  been 
neatly  and  painstakingly  sawed  through,  clear 
down  to  the  earth.  Some  of  the  butts  meas- 
ured a  foot  and  a  half  across,  and  to  have  bolls 
of  this  size,  fruit  trees  in  this  country  must 
have  attained  great  age. 

The  battery  took  position  and  went  into 
immediate  action  behind  a  covert  of  willows 
and  scrub  at  the  far  side  of  the  ruined  orchard. 
At  the  moment  we  did  not  know  that  the 
thicket  was  a  screen  along  the  southern  bank 
of  the  Oise.  At  the  left  of  where  the  guns  were 
speaking  was  a  group  of  empty  and  shattered 
cottages  stretching  along  a  single  narrow  street 
that  ran  almost  due  north  and  south.  Coming 
opposite  the  foot  of  this  street  we  glimpsed  at 
the  other  end  of  it  a  glint  of  running  water,  and 
in  the  same  instant,  perhaps  two  or  three  miles 
away  farther  on  across  the  river,  we  made  out 
the  twin  spires  of  the  cathedral  of  Noyon,  for 
which,  as  we  know,  the  contending  armies  had 
striven  for  forty-eight  hours,  and  which  the 
evening  before  had  fallen  into  the  enemy's 
hands.  Literally  we  were  at  the  front  of  the 
Front. 

East  of  the  clustered  houses  of  the  city  a 
green  hill  rose  above  the  tree  tops.  Across  the 
flanks  of  this  hill  we  saw  grey-blue  clumps 
moving.     At  that  distance  the  sight  was  sug- 

[127] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

gestive  of  a  crawling  mass  of  larvae.  Over  it 
puffs  of  smoke,  white  for  shrapnel  and  black 
for  explosives,  were  bursting.  We  were  too  far 
away  to  observe  the  effect  of  this  shelling,  but 
knew  that  the  crawling  grey  blanket  meant 
Germans  advancing  in  force  down  into  the  val- 
ley of  the  river,  and  we  knew,  too,  that  they 
were  being  punished  by  Allied  guns  as  they 
came  on  to  take  up  their  new  position. 


[128  J 


CHAPTER  VIII 
A  BRIDGE  AND  AN  AUTOMOBILE  TIRE 

CURIOUSLY  enough  there  was  at  this 
moment  and  at  this  place  no  return  fire 
from  the  enemy.  From  this  we  de- 
duced that  the  infantry  in  their  im- 
petuous onrush  had  so  far  outtravelled  the 
heavy  and  more  cumbersome  arms  of  their 
service  that  the  artillery  had  not  caught  up 
yet.  However,  a  little  later  projectiles  from 
hostile  field  pieces  began  to  drop  on  our  side 
of  the  stream. 

Halfway  of  the  length  of  the  street  our  car 
halted.  It  did  not  seem  the  part  of  wisdom 
for  the  four  of  us  to  go  ahead  in  a  group,  so  I 
walked  the  rest  of  the  way  to  spy  out  the 
land. 

Behind  the  shattered  stone  and  plaster  houses 
French  soldiers  were  squatted  or  lying.  In  the 
hope  of  finding  some  one  who  could  speak  the 
only  language  I  knew  I  continued  on  until  I 
came  to  the  last  two  houses  in  the  row.  They 
overhung  the  riverbank.  Beyond  them  were 
two  bridges  spanning  the  little  river,  one  an 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

old  steel  bridge  with  a  concrete  roadbed,  and 
the  other  a  sagging  wooden  structure,  evidently 
built  by  soldier  hands. 

The  mouth  of  the  military  bridge  was 
stopped  with  a  makeshift  barricade  thrown  to- 
gether any  which  way.  The  backbone  of  the 
barrier  was  formed  of  two  tree  trunks,  but 
they  were  half  hidden  from  sight  beneath  a 
miscellaneous  riffle  of  upturned  motor  lorries, 
wheelbarrows  and  clustered  household  furni- 
ture, including  many  mattresses  that  plainly 
had  been  filched  from  the  villagers'  abandoned 
homes.  Midway  of  the  main  bridge  a  handful 
of  French  engineers  were  pottering  away, 
rather  leisurely,  I  thought,  at  some  job  or 
other.  Two  Tommies  were  standing  behind  one 
of  the  farthermost  buildings  of  the  hamlet — a 
building  which  in  happier  days  had  been  a  cafe. 
Now  it  was  a  broken  shell,  foul  inside  with  a 
litter  of  wreckage.  The  men  wore  the  insignia 
of  the  Koyal  Lancers. 

As  I  approached  them  they  saluted,  evidently 
mistaking  me,  in  my  trench  coat  and  uniform 
cap,  for  an  American  officer.  That  an  Ameri- 
can officer  should  be  in  this  place,  so  far  away 
from  any  American  troops,  did  not  seem  to 
surprise  them  in  the  least. 

"What  town  is  this.^^"  was  my  first  question. 

"It's  called  Pontoise,  sir,"  answered  one  of 
them,  giving  to  the  name  a  literal  rendition 
very  different  from  the  French  fashion  of  pro- 
nouncing this  word. 

[130] 


A    BRIDGE    AND    AN    AUTOMOBILE    TIRE 

"What's  going  on  out  yonder  on  the  bridge?" 
I  inquired  next. 

"The  Frenchmen  is  minin'  it  to  blow  it  up, 
sir.  They  mined  it  once  already  but  the 
charge  didn't  explode,  sir.  Now  they're  goin' 
to  give  it  another  try.  They'll  be  letting  off 
the  charge  pretty  soon,  sir,  I  think — as  soon 
as  a  few  of  their  men  and  a  few  of  ours  who're 
over  on  the  other  bank  in  them  bushes  'ave 
fallen  back  to  this  side  'ere." 

"How  close  are  the  Germans?"  I  asked. 

I  figured  they  must  be  uncomfortably  close. 
They  were. 

"Come  along  with  me,  sir,  if  you  don't  mind," 
quoth  my  informant. 

Quite  in  the  most  casual  way  he  led  me  out 
from  behind  the  shelter  of  the  ruined  cafe. 
As  we  quitted  its  protection  I  could  see  over  a 
broken  garden  wall  the  British  battery  down 
below  at  the  left,  firing  as  fast  as  the  gunners 
could  serve  the  pieces.  Of  all  the  men  in  sight 
these  shirt-sleeved  artillerymen  were  the  only 
ones  who  seemed  to  have  any  urgent  business 
in  hand. 

Together  we  advanced  to  the  barricade, 
which  at  the  spot  where  we  halted  came  up  to 
our  middles.  Across  the  top  of  it  my  guide 
extended  a  soiled  hand. 

"The  beggars  are  right  there,  sir,  in  them 
bushes;  about  a  'undred  and  fifty  yards  away, 
sir,  or  two  'undred  at  the  most,"  he  said  with 
the  manner  of  a  hired  guide.     "You  carn't  see 

[131] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

them  now,  sir,  but  a  bit  ago  I  'ad  a  peep  at  a 
couple  of  'em  movin'  about.  The  reason  they 
ain't  firin'  over  'ere  is  because  they  don't 
want  us  to  locate  'em,  I  think,  sir." 

"Oh!"  I  said,  like  that.     "Oh!" 

By  mutual  but  unspoken  consent  we  then 
retired  to  our  former  position.  The  imper- 
turbable Tommy  fell  back  in  good  order,  but 
I  think  possibly  I  may  have  hurried  somewhat. 
I  always  was  a  fairly  brisk  walker,  anyhow. 

Inside  the  breached  building  my  companions 
joined  me,  and  while  the  shells  from  the  bat- 
tery and  from  the  other  batteries  farther  away 
went  racketing  over  us  toward  Noyon  we  held 
a  consultation  of  war.  Any  desire  on  the  part 
of  any  one  to  stay  and  see  what  might  happen 
after  the  bridge  had  been  blown  up  w^as  ef- 
fectually squelched  by  the  sudden  appearance 
of  two  British  officers  coming  through  the 
village  toward  us.  Did  they  choose  to  interro- 
gate us  regarding  our  mission  in  this  parlous 
vicinity  there  might  be  embarrassment  in  the 
situation  for  us.    So  we  went  away  from  there. 

As  we  departed  from  the  place  a  certain 
thing  impressed  itself  upon  my  consciousness. 
The  men  about  me — the  two  Tommies  cer- 
tainly, the  two  officers  presumably,  and  prob- 
ably the  Frenchmen — had  but  newly  emerged 
from  hard  fighting.  Of  a  surety  they  would 
very  shortly  be  engaged  in  more  hard  fighting, 
striving  to  prevent  the  on-moving  Germans 
from  crossing  the  river.    Over  their  head  shells 

[132] 


A    BRIDGE    AND    AN    AUTOMOBILE    TIRE 

from  their  own  guns  were  racking  the  air. 
Shells  from  hostile  batteries  were  beginning  to 
splatter  down  just  beyond.  This  then  was  mere- 
ly an  interval,  an  interlude  between  acts  of  a 
most  dire  and  tremendous  tragedy. 

And  yet  so  firmly  had  the  chance  of  death 
and  the  habit  of  war  become  a  part  of  their 
daily  and  their  hourly  existence  that  in  this 
brief  resting  spell  they  behaved  exactly  as  men 
engaged  in  some  wearing  but  peaceful  labour 
might  behave  during  a  nooning  in  a  harvest 
field.  No  one  in  sight  was  crouching  in  a  pos- 
ture of  defence,  with  his  rifle  gripped  in  nervous 
hands  and  his  face  set  and  intent.  Here  were 
being  exemplified  none  of  the  histrionic  prin- 
ciples of  applied  heroics  as  we  see  them  on  the 
stage. 

The  Frenchmen  were  sprawled  at  ease  be- 
hind the  walls,  their  limbs  relaxed,  their  faces 
betokening  only  a  great  weariness.  One  or  two 
actually  were  asleep  with  their  heads  pillowed 
on  their  arms.  Those  who  spoke  did  so  in 
level,  unexcited  tones.  They  might  have  been 
discussing  the  veriest  commonplaces  of  life. 
For  all  I  knew  to  the  contrary,  they  were  dis- 
cussing commonplaces.  The  two  British  pri- 
vates leaned  upon  their  rifles,  with  their  tired 
legs  sagging  under  them  and  with  cigarette 
ends  in  their  mouths.  One  of  the  officers  was 
lighting  a  pipe  as  we  drove  past  him.  One  of 
the  Frenchmen  was  gnawing  at  a  knuckle  of 
bread. 

[133] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

Indeed  there  was  nothing  about  the  scene, 
except  a  knowledge  of  the  immediate  proximity 
of  German  skirmishers,  which  would  serve  to 
invest  it  with  one-tenth  of  the  drama  that 
marked  a  hundred  other  sights  we  had  that  day 
witnessed.  Later,  though,  we  learned  we  had 
blundered  by  chance  upon  the  very  spot  where 
the  hinge  of  the  greatest  battle  of  history  next 
day  turned. 

It  was  south  of  Noyon  at  the  Pontoise  ford 
and  at  other  fords  above  and  below  Pontoise 
that  the  Germans  designed  to  cross  the  river 
in  their  onslaught  southward  against  the  de- 
fences of  Paris.  But  there  they  failed,  thanks 
be  to  British  desperation  and  French  determi- 
nation; and  it  was  then,  according  to  what 
students  of  strategy  among  the  Allies  say,  that 
the  hosts  of  the  War  Lord  altered  the  plan  of 
their  campaign  and  faced  about  to  the  west- 
ward in  their  effort  to  take  Amiens  and  sunder 
the  line  of  communication  between  Paris  and 
Calais — an  effort  w^hich  still  is  being  made  as 
I  sit  here  in  Paris  writing  these  pages  for  the 
mail. 

The  day's  journey  was  not  over  b}^  any  man- 
ner of  means,  but  so  far  as  I  personally  was 
concerned  its  culminating  moment  passed  when 
I  walked  out  on  the  bridge  timbers  with  that 
matter-of-fact  young  Royal  Lancer.  Wliat  fol- 
lowed thereafter  was  in  the  nature  of  a  series 
of  anticlimaxes,  and  yet  we  saw  a  bookful  be- 
fore we  rode  back  to  Soissons  for  a  second  night 

[  134] 


A    BRIDGE    AND    AN    AUTOMOBILE    TIRE 

under  bombardment  in  that  sorely  beset  and 
beleaguered  old  city.  Before  heading  back  we 
cruised  for  ten  kilometres  beyond  Noyon,  going 
west  by  south  toward  Compiegne. 

On  this  side  jaunt  we  mostly  skirted  the 
river,  which  on  our  bank  was  comparatively 
calm  but  which  upon  the  farther  bank  was 
being  contended  for  at  the  bayonet's  point  by 
British  and  French  against  Germans.  The 
sound  of  the  cannonading  never  ceased  for  a 
moment,  and  as  dusk  came  on  the  northern 
horizon  was  lit  up  with  flickering  waves  of  a 
sullen  dull  red  radiance.  The  nearer  we  came 
to  Compiegne  the  mere  numerous  were  the 
British,  not  in  squads  and  detachments  and 
bits  of  companies  but  in  regiments  and  brigades 
which  preserved  their  formations  even  though 
some  of  them  had  been  reduced  to  skeletons  of 
their  former  proportions.  In  the  fields  along- 
side the  way  the  artillerymen  were  throwing  up 
earthen  banks  for  the  guns;  the  infantrymen 
were  making  low  sod  walls  behind  which  they 
would  sleep  that  night  and  fight  on  the  morrow. 
From  every  hand  came  the  smell  of  brewing 
tea,  for,  battle  or  no  battle,  the  Tommy  would 
have  his  national  beverage.  The  troop  horses 
were  being  properly  bestowed  in  the  shaggly 
thickets,  and  camp  fires  threw  off  pungent 
smells  of  wood  burning.  For  the  first  time  in  a 
long  time  the  campaign  was  outdoors,  under 
the  skies. 

I  saw  one  fagged  trooper  squatting  at  the 

[135] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

roadside,  with  a  minute  scrap  of  looking-glass 
balanced  before  him  in  the  twigs  of  a  bare 
bush,  while  he  painfully  but  painstakingly  was 
shaving  himself  in  cold  ditch  water.  He  had 
fought  or  marched  all  day,  I  imagine;  his 
chances  of  being  sent  to  eternity  in  piecemeal 
before  another  sunset  were  exceedingly  good; 
but  he  would  go,  tidied  and  with  scraped  jowls, 
to  whatever  fate  might  await  him.  And  that, 
except  for  one  other  small  thing,  was  the  most 
typically  English  thing  I  witnessed  in  the  shank 
of  this  memorable  evening. 

The  other  incident  occurred  after  we  had 
faced  about  for  our  return.  In  a  maze  of  by- 
roads we  got  off  our  course.  A  lone  soldier  of 
the  Bedfordshires — a  man  near  forty,  I  should 
say  at  an  offhand  guess — was  tramping  along. 
Our  driver  halted  our  car  and  hailed  him.  He 
straightened  his  weary  back  and  came  smartly 
to  a  salute. 

"We've  lost  our  way,"  explained  one  of  us. 

He  smiled  at  us  whimsically. 

"I'm  afraid  I  can't  help  you,  sirs,"  he  said 
in  the  tones  of  an  educated  man.  "I've  lost 
my  own  way  no  less  than  six  times  to-day.  I 
may  add  that  I'm  rather  a  stranger  in  these 
parts  myself." 

When  we  got  to  Blerincourt  with  an  hour  of 
daylight  and  another  hour  of  twilight  yet  ahead 
of  us  we  turned  north  toward  Chauny,  which 
the  Germans  now  held  and  which  the  Allies 
were  bombarding  furiously.    We  had  come  to  a 

[136] 


A    BRIDGE    AND    AN    AUTOMOBILE    TIRE 

crossroads  just  back  of  a  small  village,  when 
with  a  low  spiteful  hiss  of  escaping  air  one  of 
our  rear  tires  went  flat.  We  stopped  to  replace 
the  damaged  tube  with  a  better  one.  Behind  us, 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  or  so  away,  a  British  bag- 
gage train  was  making  bivouac  for  the  night. 
Just  in  front  of  us  a  British  battery  was  firing 
over  the  housetops  of  the  empty  village  toward 
Chauny. 

We  had  the  car  jacked  up  and  the  old  tire 
off  the  rim  and  the  new  one  half  on  when — 
bang!  the  heavens  and  the  world  seemed  to 
come  together  all  about  us.  What  happened 
was  that  a  big  shell  of  high  explosives,  fired 
from  an  enemy  mortar  miles  away,  had  dropped 
within  seventy,  sixty  yards  of  us  in  a  field; 
what  seemed  to  happen  was  that  a  great  plug 
was  pulled  out  of  the  air  with  a  smiting  and  a 
crashing  and  a  rending.  The  earth  quivered 
as  though  it  had  taken  a  death  wound.  Our 
wind  shield  cracked  across  under  the  force  of 
the  concussion.  Gravel  and  bits  of  clay  de- 
scended about  us  in  a  pattering  shower. 

Speaking  for  myself,  I  may  say  that  one  of 
the  most  noticeable  physical  effects  of  having 
a  nine  shell  exploding  in  one's  immediate 
vicinity  is  a  curious  sinking  sensation  at  the 
pit  of  the  stomach,  complicated  with  a  dryness 
of  the  mouth  and  sudden  chill  in  the  feet. 

Two  more  shells  dropped  within  a  hundred 
yards  of  us  before  we  got  that  tire  pumped  up 
and  departed.    Even  so,  I  believe  the  world's 

[137] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


record  for  pumping  up  tires  was  broken  on  this 
occasion.  I  am  in  position  to  speak  with  author- 
ity on  this  detail,  because  I  was  doing  the 
pumping. 


[138] 


CHAPTER  IX 
ACES  UP! 


INSIDE  the  German  lines  at  the  start  of 
the  war  I  met  Ingold,  then  the  first  ace 
of  the  German  aerial  outfit;  only  the  Ger- 
mans did  not  call  them  aces  in  those  days 
of  the  beginnings  of  things.  The  party  to 
which  I  was  attached  spent  the  better  part 
of  a  day  as  guests  of  Herr  Hauptmann  Ingold 
and  his  mates.  Later  we  heard  of  his  death 
in  action  aloft. 

Coming  over  for  this  present  excursion  I 
crossed  on  the  same  steamer  with  Bishop 
of  Canada — a  major  of  His  Britannic  Maj- 
esty's forces  at  twenty-two,  and  at  twenty- 
three  the  bearer  of  the  Victoria  Cross  and  of 
every  other  honour  almost  that  King  George 
bestows  for  valour  and  distinguished  service, 
which  means  dangerous  service.  I  have  for- 
gotten how  many  boche  machines  this  young 
man  had,  to  date,  accounted  for.  Whether 
the  number  was  forty-seven  or  fifty-seven  I 
am  not  sure.  I  doubt  if  Bishop  himself  knew 
the  exact  figure. 

[139] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

At  Paris,  after  my  arrival,  and  at  various 
places  along  the  Front  I  have  swapped  talk 
and  smoking  tobacco  with  sundry  more  or  less 
well-known  members  of  the  Lafayette  Esca- 
drille  and  with  unattached  aviators  of  repute 
and  proved  ability.  From  each  of  these  men 
and  from  all  of  them — Belgians,  Italians,  Amer- 
icans, Britishers  and  Frenchmen — I  brought 
away  an  impression  of  the  light-hearted  gal- 
lantry, the  modesty  and  the  exceeding  great 
competency  which  appear  to  be  the  outstand- 
ing characteristics  of  those  who  do  their  fight- 
ing— and,  in  a  great  many  instances,  their 
dying — in  the  air.  It  was  almost  as  though  the 
souls  of  these  men  had  been  made  cleaner  and 
as  though  their  spirits  had  been  made  to  burn 
with  a  whiter  flame  by  reason  of  the  purer 
element  in  which  they  carried  on  the  bulk  of 
their  appointed  share  in  this  w^ar  business.  You 
somehow  felt  that  when  they  left  the  earth 
they  shook  off  from  their  feet  a  good  part  of  the 
dirt  of  the  earth.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that 
they  had  become  superhuman,  but  that  they 
had  acquired,  along  with  their  training  for  a 
special  and  particularised  calling,  some  touch 
of  the  romanticism  that  attached  to  the  an- 
cient and  dutiful  profession  of  knight-errantry. 

Nor  is  this  hard  to  understand.  For  a  fact 
the  flying  men  are  to-day  the  knights-errant 
of  the  armies.  To  them  are  destined  oppor- 
tunities for  individual  achievement  and  for 
individual  initiative  and  very  often  for  indi- 

[  140  ] 


ACES    UP  I 


vidual  sacrifice  such  as  are  denied  the  masses 
of  performers  in  this  war,  which  in  so  many 
respects  is  a  clandestine  war  and  which  in  nearly 
all  respects  is  an  anonymous  war.  I  think 
sometimes  that,  more  even  than  the  abject 
stupidity  of  the  enterprise,  it  is  the  entire 
taking-away  of  the  drama — the  colour  of  theat- 
ricalism,  the  pomp  and  the  circumstance,  the 
fuss  and  the  feathers — that  will  make  war  an 
exceedingly  unpopular  institution  for  future 
generations,  as  it  has  been  an  exceedingly  un- 
profitable if  a  highly  necessary  one  for  this 
present  generation.  When  the  planet  has  been 
purged  of  militarism,  the  parent  sin  of  the 
whole  sinful  and  monstrous  thing,  I  am  con- 
vinced that  the  sordid,  physically  filthy  drab- 
ness  that  now  envelops  the  machinery  of  it 
will  be  as  potent  an  agency  as  the  spreading 
of  the  doctrine  of  democracy  in  curing  civilised 
mankind  of  any  desire  to  make  war  for  war's 
sake  rather  than  for  freedom  and  justice. 

One  has  only  to  see  it  at  first  hand  in  this 
fourth  year  of  conflict  to  realise  how  com- 
pletely war  has  been  translated  out  of  its  former 
elements.  It  is  no  longer  an  exciting  outdoor 
sport  for  fox-chasing  gentlemen  in  bright-red 
coats;  no  longer  a  seasonal  diversion  for  cross- 
country riders  in  buckskin  breeches.  It  is  a 
trade  for  expert  accountants,  for  civil-engi- 
neering sharps,  for  rule  of  ^  lumb,  for  pick  and 
shovel  and  the  land  sr  v'eyor's  instruments. 
As  the  outward  romance  of  it  has  vanished 

[141] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

away,  in  the  same  proportion  the  amount  of 
manual  labour  necessary  to  accomplish  any  de- 
sired object  has  increased  until  it  is  nearly  all 
work  and  mighty  little  play — a  combination 
which  makes  Jack  a  dull  boy  and  makes  war 
a  far  duller  game  than  it  used  to  be.  Of  course 
the  chances  for  heroic  achievements,  for  the 
development  and  the  exercise  of  the  traits  of 
courage  and  steadfastness  and  disciplined  en- 
ergy, are  as  frequent  as  ever  they  were,  but 
generally  speaking  the  picturesqueness  with 
which  mankind  always  has  loved  to  invest  its 
more  heroic  virtues  has  been  obliterated — flat- 
tened under  the  steam  roller. 

To  the  average  soldier  is  denied  the  prospect 
of  ever  meeting  face  to  face  the  foe  with  whom 
he  contends.  For  every  man  who  with  set  jaw 
climbs  the  top  to  sink  his  teeth,  figuratively  or 
actually,  in  the  embodied  enemy,  there  are  a 
dozen  who  toil  and  moil  far  back  behind  in 
manual  labours  of  the  most  exacting  and  ex- 
hausting forms  imaginable.  A  night  raid  is  a 
variety  of  sublimated  burglary,  better  adapted 
to  the  temperament  of  the  prowler  and  the 
poacher  than  to  the  upstanding  soldier  man's 
instincts.  If  there  be  fear  of  gas  he  adds  to  the 
verisimilitude  of  the  imitation  by  hiding  his 
face  behind  a  mask  as  though  he  were  a  foot- 
pad. If  a  battle  be  a  massacre,  w^hich  generally 
it  is,  then  intermittent  fighting  is  merely  or- 
ganised and  S3"stematised  assassination. 

By  stealth,  by  trick  and  device,  by  artificial 

[  142  ] 


ACES    UP  ! 


expedients  smacking  of  the  allied  schools  of 
the  housebreaker  and  the  highwayman,  things 
are  accomplished  that  once  upon  a  bygone 
time  eventuated  from  brawn,  plus  powder,  plus 
chilled  steel.  Trench  work  means  setting  a 
man  to  dig  in  the  mud  a  hole  that  may  become 
his  grave,  and  frequently  does.  He  spends  his 
days  in  a  shallow  crevice  in  the  earth  and  his 
nights  in  a  somewhat  deeper  one,  called  a  dug- 
out. He  combines  in  his  customary  life  the 
habits  of  the  boring  grub  and  the  habits  of  the 
blind  worm,  with  a  touch  of  the  mine  mule 
thrown  in. 

Once  in  a  while  he  stings  like  a  puff-adder, 
but  not  often.  The  infantryman  plies  a  spade 
a  week  for  every  hour  that  he  pumps  a  rifle. 
The  cavalryman  is  more  apt  to  be  driving  a 
truck  or  tramping  long  roads  than  riding  a  horse. 
The  artilleryman  sets  up  his  pieces  miles  be- 
hind the  line  and  fires  at  the  indirect  target  of 
an  invisible  foe,  without  the  poor  satisfaction 
of  being  able  to  tell,  with  his  eyes,  whether  he 
scored  a  hit  or  a  miss.  A  sum  in  arithmetic  is 
his  guide  and  a  telephone  operator  is  his  men- 
tor. Mayhap  some  day  a  hostile  shell  descends 
out  of  a  clear  sky  upon  his  battery;  and  then 
the  men  are  mess  and  the  guns  are  scrap  and 
that  is  all  there  is  to  that  small  chapter  of  the 
great  tale  of  the  war. 

The  bomber  who  spends  months  learning 
how  to  cast  the  grenade  may  never  get  a 
chance  to  cast  one  except  in  practice.    A  man 

[143] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

fights  for  his  flag  but  doesn't  see  it  when  the 
action  starts,  for  then  it  is  furled.  The  regi- 
mental band  plays  him  off  to  church  service 
but  not  into  the  battle.  When  the  battle  be- 
gins the  bandmen  have  exchanged  their  horns 
for  the  handles  of  a  litter,  becoming  stretcher 
bearers.  The  general  wears  no  epaulets.  He 
wears  a  worried  look  brought  on  by  dealing  o' 
nights  with  strategic  problems  out  of  a  book. 
The  modern  thin  red  line  is  a  thing  done  in 
bookkeeper's  ink  on  a  ruled  form.  So  it  goes. 
The  bubble  reputation  is  won,  not  at  the  can- 
non's mouth,  but  across  a  desk  top  in  a  shell- 
proof  fox  den  far  from  where  the  cannon  are. 
The  gallant  six  hundred  do  not  ride  into  the 
jaws  of  death.  Numbering  many  times  six 
hundred,  they  advance  afoot,  creeping  at  a 
pallbearer's  pace  behind  a  barrage  fire.  So  it 
keeps  on  going. 

In  only  one  wing  of  the  service,  and  that  the 
newest  of  all  the  wings,  is  there  to  be  found  a 
likeness  to  the  chivalry  and  the  showiness  of 
these,  other  times.  The  aviator  is  the  one  ex- 
ception to  a  common  rule.  To  him  falls  the 
great  adventure.  He  goes  jousting  in  the  blue 
lists  of  the  sky,  helmeted  and  corseleted  like  a 
crusader  of  old.  His  lance  is  a  spitting  machine 
gun.  His  steed  is  a  twentieth-century  Pegasus, 
with  wings  of  fine  linen  and  guts  of  tried  steel. 
Thousands  of  envying  eyes  follow  him  as  he 
steers  his  single  course  to  wage  his  single  com- 
bat, and  if  he  takes  his  death  up  there  it  is  a 

[_144  ] 


ACES    U  P  I 


clean,  quick,  merciful  death  high  above  the 
muck  and  more  and  jets  of  noxious  laboratory 
fumes  where  the  rest  take  theirs. 

Even  the  surroundings  of  the  birdman's  nest 
are  physically  nore  attractive  than  the  habitat 
of  his  brother  at  arms  who  bides  below.  I  can 
think  of  nothing  homelier  in  outline  or  colour 
than  the  shelters — sometimes  of  planking,  some- 
times of  corrugated  iron,  sometimes  of  earth — 
in  which  the  soldiers  hide  here  in  France.  The 
field  hospital  is  apt  to  be  a  distressingly  plain 
structure  of  unpainted  boards  with  sandbags 
banked  against  it. 

I  have  seen  a  general's  headquarters  in  an 
underground  tunnel  that  was  like  an  over- 
grown badger's  nest,  with  nothing  outwardly 
to  distinguish  it  from  a  similar  row  of  tunnels 
except  that  it  had  a  lettered  sign  over  its  damp 
and  dripping  mouth. 

Tents,  which  have  a  certain  picturesque 
quality  when  grouped,  are  rarely  seen  here  in 
this  closely  settled  Europe,  where  nearly  al- 
ways there  are  enough  roofed  and  walled  build- 
ings to  provide  billets  for  the  troops,  however 
numerous.  Instead  of  tents  there  are  occa- 
sionally jumbles  of  makeshift  barracks,  and 
more  often  haphazard  colonies  of  sheds  serving 
as  garages  or  as  supply  depots  or  as  offices  or 
as  what  not.  War,  which  in  itself  is  so  ugly 
a  thing,  seems  to  possess  the  facility  of  making 
ugly  its  accessories  before  and  after  the  fact. 

But   the   quarters    of    the   flying   machines, 

[  145  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

through  their  vastness  and  isolation,  acquire  a 
certain  quahty  of  catching  the  eye  that  is  en- 
tirely lacking  for  the  rest  of  the  picture — the 
big  hangars  in  the  background,  suggesting  by 
their  shape  and  number  the  pitched  encamp- 
ment of  a  three-ring  circus;  the  flappy  canvas 
shields  at  the  open  side  of  the  dromes,  which, 
being  streaked  and  daubed  with  paint  camou- 
flage, enhance  the  carnival  suggestion  by  look- 
ing, at  a  distance,  like  side-show  banners;  the 
caravans  of  trucks  drawn  up  in  lines;  and  in 
fine  weather  the  flying  craft  resting  in  the  land- 
ing field,  all  slick  and  groomed  and  polished, 
like  a  landed  proprietor's  blooded  stock,  giving 
off  flashes  from  aluminum  and  varnish  and 
steel  and  deft  cabinetwork  in  answer  to  the 
caresses  of  the  sunshine. 

Right  here  I  am  reminded  that  the  tem- 
peramental differences  of  the  Allied  nations  are 
shown  most  aptly,  I  think,  in  the  fashion  in 
which  the  aviators  decorate  their  gorgeous  pets. 

Upon  its  planes,  of  course,  each  bears  the 
distinguishing  mark  of  the  country  to  which  it 
belongs,  but  the  bodies  are  the  property,  so  to 
speak,  of  the  individual  flyers,  to  be  treated 
according  to  the  fancy  of  the  individual. 

Thus  it  befalls  that  an  Italian  machine  gen- 
erally carries  a  picture  of  a  flower  upon  its  sides. 
It  is  characteristic  of  the  race  that  a  French 
machine  usually  wears  either  a  valorous,  so- 
norous name  or  the  name  of  a  woman — perhaps 
the  name  of  the  aviator's  sweetheart,  or  that 

[146] 


ACES    UP  ! 


of  his  mother  or  his  sister  possibly.  But  your 
average  British  airman  is  apt  to  christen  his 
machine  Old  Bill  or  Gaby  or  Our  Little  Nipper 
or  The  Walloping  Window  Blind — I  have  seen 
all  of  these  cheery  titles  emblazoned  upon 
splendid  big  aircraft  in  a  British  hangar — and 
just  let  it  go  at  that.  I 

I  reckon  the  German,  taking  his  morning 
hate  along  with  his  morning  chicory,  never 
will  understand  how  it  is  the  Britisher  and 
the  Yankee  can  make  war  and  make  jokes 
about  it  and  be  good  sportsmen  all  at  the 
same  time.  The  German  is  very  sentimental 
— I  myself  have  heard  him  with  tears  in  his 
voice  singing  his  songs  of  the  home  place  and 
the  Christmas  tree  and  the  Rhine  maiden  as 
he  marched  past  a  burning  orphan  asylum  in 
Belgium;  but  his  sense  of  humour,  if  ever  he 
really  owned  such  a  thing,  was  long  ago  smoth- 
ered to  death  by  the  poisoned  chemical  processes 
of  his  own  military  machine.  The  man  who  was 
so  bad  that  he  was  scared  of  himself  must 
have  been  the  original  exemplar  of  the  fright- 
fulness  doctrine.  Anyhow  he  was  born  in 
Prussia — I'm  sure  of  that  much  anyway. 

But  I  am  getting  away  from  my  subject — 
have  been  getting  away  from  it  for  quite  a 
spell,  I  fear;  because  in  the  first  place  I  started 
out  to  tell  about  a  meeting  and  a  trip  and  a 
dinner  and  a  song  and  divers  other  things. 
The  affair  dated  from  a  certain  spring  noon- 
time when  two  of  us,  writers  by  trade,  were 

[147] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

temporarily  marooned  for  the  day  at  the  press 
headquarters  of  the  American  Expeditionary 
Force  because  we  couldn't  anywhere  get  hold 
of  an  automobile  to  take  us  for  a  scouting 
jaunt  along  the  American  sector.  All  of  a 
sudden  a  big  biplane  came  sailing  into  sight, 
glittering  like  a  silver  flying  fish.  It  landed  in 
a  meadow  behind  the  town  and  two  persons, 
muffled  in  greatcoats,  decanted  themselves  out 
of  it  and  tramped  across  the  half -flooded  field 
toward  us.  When  they  drew  near  we  perceived 
them  to  be  two  very  young,  very  ruddy  gentle- 
men, and  both  unmistakably  English.  My 
companion,  it  seemed,  knew  one  of  them,  so 
there  were  introductions. 

"What  brings  you  over  this  way.^^"  inquired 
my  friend. 

"Well,  you  see,"  said  his  acquaintance,  "we 
were  a  bit  thirsty — Bert  and  I — and  we  heard 
you  had  very  good  beer  at  the  French  oflScers' 
club  here.  So  we  just  ran  over  for  half  an  hour 
or  so  to  get  a  drop  of  drink  and  then  toddle 
along  back  again.    Not  a  bad  idea,  eh,  what.^^" 

The  speaker,  I  noted,  wore  the  twin  crowns 
of  a  captain  on  the  shoulder  straps  of  his  over- 
coat. His  age  I  should  have  put  at  twenty-one 
or  thereabout,  and  his  complexion  was  the  com- 
plexion of  a  very  new,  very  healthy  cherub. 

We  showed  the  way  toward  beer  and  lunch, 
the  latter  being  table  d'hote  but  good.  En 
route  my  confrere  was  moved  to  ask  more  ques- 
tions. 

[  148  ] 


ACES    UP  I 


"Anything  new  happening  at  the  squadron 
since  I  was  over  that  way?"  he  inquired. 

"Quiet  enough  to  be  a  bore — weather  hasn't 
suited  for  our  sort  these  last  few  evenings," 
stated  the  taller  one.  "We  got  fed  up  on 
doin'  nothin'  at  all,  so  night  before  last  a 
squad  started  across  the  border  to  give  Fritzie 
a  taste  of  life.  But  just  after  we  started  the 
squadron  commander  decided  the  weather  was 
too  thickish  and  he  signed  us  back — all  but  the 
Young-un,  who  claims  he  didn't  see  the  flare 
and  kept  on  goin'  all  by  his  little  self."  He 
favoured  us  with  a  tremendous  wink. 

"It  seemed  a  rotten  shame,  really  it  did,  to 
waste  the  whole  evenin'."  This  was  the 
Young-un,  he  of  the  pink  cheeks,  speaking. 
"So  I  just  jogged  across  the  jolly  old  Rhine 
until  I  come  to  a  town,  and  I  dropped  my  pills 
there  and  came  back.  Nice  quiet  trip  it  was — 
lonely  rather,  and  not  a  bit  excitin'." 

Upon  me  a  light  dawned.  I  had  heard  of 
these  bombing  squadrons  of  the  British  outfits 
of  young  but  seasoned  flying  men,  who,  now 
that  reprisal  in  kind  had  been  forced  upon 
England  and  France  by  the  continued  German 
policy  of  aerial  attacks  on  unprotected  and  un- 
armed cities,  made  journeys  from  French  soil 
by  sky  line  to  enemy  districts,  there  to  spatter 
down  retaliatory  bombs  upon  such  towns  as 
Mainz,  Stuttgart,  Coblenz,  Mannheim,  Treves 
and  Metz. 

The   which   sounded   simple   enough   in   the 

[149] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

bald  telling,  but  entailed  for  each  separate  pair 
of  flyers  on  each  separate  excursion  enough  of 
thrill,  suspense  and  danger  to  last  the  average 
man  through  all  his  various  reincarnations 
upon  this  earth.  It  meant  a  flight  by  darkness 
at  sixty  or  seventy  miles  an  hour,  the  pilot  at 
the  wheel  and  the  observer  at  the  guardian 
machine  gun,  above  the  tangled  skeins  of 
friendly  trenches;  and  a  little  farther  on  above 
and  past  the  hostile  lines,  beset  for  every  rod 
of  the  way,  both  going  and  coming,  by  peril  of 
attack  from  antiaircraft  gun  and  from  speedier, 
more  agile  German  flyers,  since  the  bombing 
airship  is  heavier  and  slower  than  scout  planes 
commonly  are.  It  meant  finding  the  objective 
point  of  attack  and  loosing  the  explosive  shells 
hanging  like  ripe  plums  from  lever  hooks  in 
the  frame  of  the  engine  body;  and  this  done 
it  meant  winging  back  again — provided  they 
got  back — in  time  for  late  dinner  at  the  home 
hangars. 

Personally  I  craved  to  see  more  of  men  en- 
gaged upon  such  employment.  Through  lunch 
I  studied  the  two  present  specimens  of  a  new 
and  special  type  of  human  being.  Except  that 
Bert  was  big  and  the  Young-un  was  short,  and 
except  that  the  Young-un  spoke  of  dropping 
pills  when  he  meant  to  tell  of  spilling  potential 
destruction  upon  the  supply  depots  and  railroad 
terminals  of  Germany,  whereas  Bert  affection- 
ately referred  to  his  machine  as  The  Red  Hen 
and  called  the  same  process  laying  an  egg  or 

[150] 


ACES    UP  I 


two,  there  was  no  great  distinction  to  be  drawn 
between  them.  Both  made  mention  of  the 
most  incredibly  daring  things  in  the  most 
commonplace  and  casual  way  imaginable;  both 
had  the  inquisitive  nose  and  the  incurious  eye 
of  their  breed;  both  professed  a  tremendous 
interest  in  things  not  one-thousandth  part  so 
interesting  as  what  they  themselves  did;  and 
both  used  the  word  "extraordinary"  to  express 
their  convictions  upon  subjects  not  in  the  least 
extraordinary,  but  failed  to  use  it  when  the 
topic  dealt  with  their  own  duties  and  deserved 
to  excess  the  adjectival  treatment.  In  short, 
they  were  just  two  well-bred  English  boys. 


( 

[151  ] 


CHAPTER  X 
HAPPY  LANDINGS 


OUT  of  the  luncheon  sprang  an  invita- 
tion, and  out  of  the  invitation  was  born 
a  trip.  On  a  day  when  the  atmosphere 
was  better  fitted  for  automobiling  in 
closed  cars  than  for  bombings  we  headed  away 
from  our  billets,  travelling  in  what  I  shall  call 
a  general  direction,  there  being  four  of  us  be- 
sides the  sergeant  who  drove.  Things  were 
stirring  along  the  Front.  Miles  away  we  could 
hear  the  battery  heavies  thundering  and  drum- 
ming, and  once  in  a  lull  we  detected  the  ham- 
mering staccato  of  a  machine  gun  tacking  down 
the  loose  edges  of  a  fight  that  will  never  be  re- 
corded in  history,  with  the  earnestness  and 
briskness  of  a  man  laying  a  carpet  in  a  hurry. 
The  Romans  taught  the  French  how  to  plan 
highroads,  and  the  French  never  forgot  the 
lesson.  The  particular  road  we  travelled  ran 
kilometre  on  kilometre  straight  as  a  lance  up 
the  hills  and  down  again  across  the  valleys,  and 
only  turned  out  to  round  the  shoulders  of  a 
little  mountain  or  when  it  flanked  the  shore  line 

[152] 


HAPPY    LANDINGS 


of  one  of  the  small  brawling  French  rivers. 
The  tall  poplars  in  pairs,  always  in  pairs,  which 
edged  it  were  like  lean  old  gossips  bending  in 
toward  the  centre  the  better  to  exchange  whis- 
pered scandal  about  the  neighbours.  Mainly 
the  road  pierced  through  fields,  with  infrequent 
villages  to  be  passed  and  once  a  canal  to  be 
skirted;  but  also  there  were  forests  where  wild 
boar  were  reputed  to  reside  and  where,  as  we 
know,  the  pheasant  throve  in  numbers  un- 
dreamed of  in  the  ante-bellum  days  before  all 
the  powder  in  Europe  was  needed  to  kill  off 
men,  and  while  yet  some  of  it  might  be  spared 
for  killing  off  birds. 

Regarding  the  mountains  a  rule  was  preva- 
lent. If  one  flank  of  a  mountain  was  wooded 
we  might  be  reasonably  sure  that  the  farther 
side  would  present  a  patchwork  pattern  of  tiny 
farms,  square  sometimes,  but  more  often  oblong 
in  shape,  each  plastered  against  the  steep  con- 
formation and  each  so  nearly  perpendicular 
that  we  v/ondered  how  anybody  except  a  re- 
tired paper  hanger  ever  dared  try  to  cultivate 
it.  Let  a  husbandman's  foot  slip  up  there  and 
he  would  be  committing  trespass  in  the  plot 
of  the  next  man  below. 

I  shall  not  tell  how  far  we  rode,  or  whither, 
but  dusk  found  us  in  a  place  which,  atmospher- 
ically speaking,  was  very  far  removed  from  the 
French  foothills,  but  geographically  perhaps 
not  so  far.  So  far  as  its  local  colour  was  con- 
cerned the  place  in  point  more  nearly  than  any- 

[153] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

thing  else  I  call  to  mind  resembled  the  interior 
of  a  Greek-letter  society's  chapter  house  set 
amid  somewhat  primitive  surroundings.  In 
the  centre  of  the  low  wide  common  room, 
mounted  on  a  concrete  box,  was  a  big  openwork 
basket  of  wrought  iron.  In  this  brazier  burned 
fagots  of  wood,  and  the  smoke  went  up  a  metal 
pipe  which  widened  out  to  funnel  shape  at  the 
bottom,  four  feet  above  the  floor. 

Such  a  device  has  three  advantages  over  the 
ordinary  fireplace:  Folks  may  sit  upon  four 
sides  of  it,  toasting  their  shins  by  direct  contact 
with  the  heat,  instead  of  upon  only  one,  as  is 
the  case  when  your  chimney  goes  up  through 
the  wall  of  your  house.  There  were  illustrations 
cut  from  papers  upon  the  walls;  there  were 
sporting  prints  and  London  dailies  on  the 
chairs  and  trestles;  there  was  a  phonograph, 
which  performed  wheezily,  as  though  it  had 
asthma,  and  a  piano,  which  by  authority  was 
mute  until  after  dinner;  there  were  sundry 
guitars  and  mandolins  disposed  in  corners ;  there 
were  sofa  pillows  upon  the  settees,  plainly  the 
handiwork  of  some  fellow's  best  girl;  there  were 
clumsy,  schoolboy  decorative  touches  all  about; 
there  were  glasses  and  bottles  on  tables;  there 
were  English  non-coms,  who  in  their  gravity 
and  promptness  might  have  been  club  servants, 
bringing  in  more  bottles  and  fresh  glasses;  and 
there  were  frolicking,  boisterous  groups  and 
knots  and  clusters  of  youths  who,  except  that 
they  wore  the  khaki  of  junior  oflBcers  of  His 

[  154  ] 


HAPPY    LANDINGS 


Majesty's  service  instead  of  the  ramping  pat- 
terns affected  by  your  average  undergraduates, 
were  for  all  the  world  just  such  a  collection  of 
resident  inmates  as  you  would  find  playing 
the  goat  and  the  colt  and  the  skylark  in  any 
college  fraternity  hall  on  any  pleasant  evening 
anywhere  among  the  English-speaking  peoples. 

For  guests  of  honour  there  were  our  four, 
and  for  hosts  there  were  sixty  or  seventy  mem- 
bers of  Night  Bombing  Squadron  Number . 

It  so  happened  that  this  particular  group  of 
picked  and  sifted  young  daredevils  represented 
every  main  division  of  the  empire's  domain.  As 
we  were  told,  there  were  present  Englishmen, 
Cornishmen,  Welshmen,  Scots  and  Irishmen; 
also  Canadians,  Australians,  New  Zealanders, 
an  Afrikander  or  two,  and  a  dark  youngster 
from  India;  as  well  as  recruits  gathered  in  from 
lesser  lands  and  lesser  colonies  where  the  Union 
Jack  floats  in  the  seven  seas  that  girdle  this 
globe. 

The  ranking  officer — a  major  by  title,  and 
he  not  yet  twenty-four  years  old — bore  the 
name  of  a  Highland  clan,  the  mere  mention  of 
which  set  me  to  thinking  of  whanging  claymores 
and  skirling  pipes.  His  next  in  command  was 
the  nephew  and  namesake  of  a  famous  Home 
Ruler,  and  this  one  spoke  with  the  soft-cultured 
brogue  of  the  Dublin  collegian.  We  were  intro- 
duced to  a  flyer  bred  and  reared  in  Japan,  who 
had  hurried  to  the  mother  isle  as  soon  as  he 
reached  the  volunteering  age — a  shy,  quiet  lad 

[155] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

with  a  downy  upper  lip,  who  promptly  effaced 
himself;  and  to  a  young  Tasmanian  of  Celtic 
antecedents,  who,  curiously  enough,  spoke  with 
an  English  accent  richer  and  more  pronounced 
than  any  native  Englishman  in  the  company 
used. 

I  took  pains  to  ascertain  the  average  age  of 
the  personnel  of  the  squadron.  I  am  giving  no 
information  to  the  enemy  that  he  already  does 
not  know — to  his  cost — when  I  state  it  to  be 
twenty-two  and  a  half  years.  With  perfect 
gravity  veteran  airmen  of  twenty-three  or  so 
will  tell  you  that  when  a  fellow  reaches  twenty- 
five  he's  getting  rather  a  bit  too  old  for  the 
game — good  enough  for  instructing  green  hands 
and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  perhaps,  but  gener- 
ally past  the  age  when  he  may  be  counted  upon 
for  effective  work  against  the  Hun  aloft.  And 
the  wondrous  part  of  it  is  that  it  is  true  as 
Gospel.  'Tis  a  man's  game,  if  ever  there  was 
a  man's  game  in  this  world;  and  it's  boys  with 
the  peach-down  of  adolescence  on  their  cheeks 
that  play  it  best. 

Well,  we  had  dinner;  and  a  very  good  dinner 
it  was,  served  in  the  mess  hall  adjoining,  with 
fowls  and  a  noble  green  salad,  and  good  honest- 
to-cow's  butter  on  the  table.  But  before  we 
had  dinner  a  thing  befell  which  to  me  was  as 
simply  dramatic  as  anything  possibly  could  be. 
What  was  more,  it  came  at  a  moment  made 
and  fit  for  dramatics,  being  as  deftly  insinuated 
by  chance  into  the  proper  spot  as  though  a 

[156] 


HAPPY    LANDINGS 


skilled  playmaster  had  contrived  it  for  the 
climax  of  his  second  act. 

Glasses  had  been  charged  all  round,  and  we 
were  standing  to  drink  the  toast  of  the  British 
aviator  when,  almost  together,  two  small  things 
happened:  The  electric  lights  flickered  out, 
leaving  us  in  the  half  glow  of  the  crackling 
flames  in  the  brazier,  its  tints  bringing  out 
here  a  ruddy  young  face  and  there  a  buckle  of 
brass  or  a  button  of  bronze  but  leaving  all  the 
rest  of  the  picture  in  flickering  shadows;  right 
on  top  of  this  a  servant  entered,  saluted  and 
handed  to  the  squadron  commander  a  slip  of 
paper  bearing  a  bulletin  just  received  by  tele- 
phone from  the  headquarters  of  a  sister  squad- 
ron in  a  near-by  sector.  The  young  major  first 
read  it  through  silently  and  then  read  it  aloud: 

"Eight  machines  of   squadron made  a 

day-light  raid  this  afternoon.  The  operation 
was  successfully  carried  out.'^  A  little  pause. 
"Three  of  the  machines  failed  to  return.^' 

That  was  all.  Three  of  the  machines  failed 
to  return — six  men,  mates  to  these  youngsters 
assembled  here  and  friends  to  some  of  them, 
had  gone  down  in  the  wreckage  of  their  air- 
craft, probably  to  death  or  to  what  was  hardly 
less  terrible  than  death — to  captivity  in  a 
German  prison  cam.p. 

Well,  it  was  all  in  the  day's  work.  No  one 
spoke,  nor  in  my  hearing  did  any  one  afterward 
refer  to  it.  But  the  glasses  came  up  with  a 
jerk,  and  at  that,  as  though  on  a  signal  from 

[157] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

a  stage  manager,  the  lights  flipped  on,  and 
then  together  we  drank  the  airman's  toast, 
which  is : 

"Happy  landings!" 

I  do  not  profess  to  speak  for  the  others,  but 
for  myself  I  know  I  drank  to  the  memory  of 
those  six  blithe  boys — riders  in  the  three  ma- 
chines that  failed  to  return — and  to  a  happy 
landing  for  them  in  the  eternity  to  which  they 
had  been  hurried  long  before  their  time. 

The  best  part  of  the  dinner  came  after  the 
dinner  was  over,  which  was  as  a  dinner  party 
should  be.  We  flanked  ourselves  on  the  four 
sides  of  the  fire,  and  tobacco  smoke  rose  in 
volume  as  an  incense  to  good  fellowship,  and 
there  were  stories  told  and  limericks  offered 
without  number.  And  if  a  story  was  new  we 
all  laughed  at  it,  and  if  it  was  old  we  laughed 
just  the  same.  Presently  a  protesting  lad  was 
dragooned  for  service  at  the  piano.  The  official 
troubadour,  a  youth  who  seemed  to  be  all  legs 
and  elbows,  likewise  detached  himself  from  the 
background.  Instead  of  taking  station  along- 
side the  piano  he  climbed  gravely  up  on  top 
of  it  and  perched  there  above  our  heads,  with 
his  legs  dangling  down  below  the  keys.  Touch- 
ing on  this,  the  Young-un,  who  sat  alongside 
of  me,  made  explanation: 

"Old  Bob  likes  to  sit  on  the  old  jingle  box 
when  he  sings,  you  know.  He  says  that  then 
he  can  feel  the  music  going  up  through  him 
and  it  makes  him  sing.     He'll  stay  up  there 

[158] 


HAPPY    LANDINGS 


singing  like  a  bloomin'  bullfinch  till  some  one 
drags  him  down.  He  seems  to  sort  of  get  drunk 
on  singin' — really  he  does.  Extraordinary 
fancy,  isn't  it.^" 

I  should  have  been  the  last  to  drag  Old  Bob 
down.  For,  employing  a  wonderful  East  Ender 
whine.  Old  Bob  sang  a  gorgeous  Cockney 
ballad  dealing  with  the  woeful  case  of  a  simple 
country  maiden,  and  her  smyle  it  was  su- 
blyme,  but  she  met  among  others  the  village 
squire,  and  the  rest  of  it  may  not  be  printed 
in  a  volume  having  a  family  circulation;  but 
anyway  it  was  a  theme  replete  with  incident 
and  abounding  in  detail,  with  a  hundred  verses 
more  or  less  and  a  chorus  after  every  verse, 
for  which  said  chorus  we  all  joined  in  mightily. 

From  this  beginning  Old  Bob,  beating  time 
with  both  hands,  ranged  far  afield  into  his 
repertoire.  Under  cover  of  his  singing  I  did 
my  level  best  to  draw  out  the  Young-un — who 
it  seemed  was  the  Young-un  more  by  reason  of 
his  size  and  boyish  complexion  than  by  reason 
of  his  age,  since  he  was  senior  to  half  his  outfit 
— to  draw  him  out  with  particular  reference  to 
his  experiences  since  the  time,  a  year  before, 
when  he  quit  the  line,  being  then  a  full  cap- 
tain, to  take  a  berth  as  observer  in  the  service 
of  the  air. 

It  was  hard  sledding,  though.  He  was  just 
as  inarticulate  and  just  as  diffident  as  the  av- 
erage English  gentleman  is  apt  to  be  when  he 
speaks  in  the  hated  terms  of  shop  talk  of  his 

[159] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

own  share  in  any  dangerous  or  unusual  enter- 
prise. Besides,  our  points  of  view  were  so 
different.  He  wanted  to  hear  about  the  latest 
music-hall  shows  in  London;  he  asked  about  the 
life  in  London  with  a  touch  in  his  voice  of  what 
I  interpreted  as  homesickness.  Whereas  I 
wanted  to  know  the  sensations  of  a  youth  who 
flirts  with  death  as  a  part  of  his  daily  vocation. 
Finally  I  got  him  under  way,  after  this  wise: 

*'0h,  we  just  go  over  the  line,  you  know,  and 
drop  our  pills  and  come  back.  Occasionally  a 
chap  doesn't  get  back.  And  that's  about  all 
there  is  to  tell  about  it.  .  .  .  Rummiest  thing 
that  has  happened  since  I  came  into  the  squad- 
ron happened  the  other  night.  The  boche  came 
over  to  raid  us,  and  when  the  alarm  was  given 
every  one  popped  out  of  his  bed  and  made  for 
the  dugout.  All  but  Big  Bill  over  yonder. 
Big  Bill  tumbled  out  half  dressed  and  more 
than  half  asleep.  It  was  a  fine  moonlight  night 
and  the  boche  was  sailing  about  overhead 
bombing  us  like  a  good  one,  and  Big  Bill,  who's 
a  size  to  make  a  good  target,  couldn't  find  the 
entrance  to  either  of  the  dugouts.  So  he  ran 
for  the  woods  just  beyond  here  at  the  edge  of 
the  flying  field,  and  no  sooner  had  he  got  into 
the  woods  than  a  wild  boar  came  charging  at 
him  and  chased  him  out  again  into  the  open 
where  the  bombs  were  droppin'.  Almost  got 
him,  too — the  wild  boar,  I  mean.  The  bombs 
didn't  fall  anywhere  near  him.  Extraordinary, 
wasn't  it,   havin'   a  wild    boar  turn  up  like 

[160] 


HAPPY    LANDINGS 


that  just  when  he  was  particularly  anxious  not 
to  meet  any  wild  boar,  not  being  dressed  for  it, 
as  you  might  say?  He  was  in  a  towerin'  rage 
when  the  boche  went  away  and  we  came  out 
of  the  dugouts  and  only  laughed  at  him  instead 
of  sympathisin'  with  him." 

He  puffed  at  his  pipe. 

"Fritz  gets  peevish  and  comes  about  to 
throw  things  at  us  quite  frequently.  You  see, 
this  camp  isn't  in  a  very  good  place.  We  took 
it  over  from  the  French  and  it  stands  out  in 
the  open  instead  of  being  in  the  edge  of  the 
forest  w^here  it  should  be.  Makes  it  rather 
uncomfy  for  us  sometimes — Fritzie  does." 

All  of  which  rather  prepared  me  for  what  oc- 
curred perhaps  five  minutes  later  when  for  the 
second  time  that  night  the  electric  lights  winked 
out. 

Old  Bob  ceased  from  his  carolling,  and  the 
mess  president,  a  little  sandy  Scotchman,  spoke 
up: 

"It  may  be  that  the  boche  is  coming  to  call 
on  us — the  men  douse  the  lights  if  we  get  a 
warning;  or  it  may  be  that  the  battery  has 
failed.  At  any  rate  I  vote  we  have  in  some 
candles  and  carry  on.  This  is  too  fine  an  even- 
ing to  be  spoiled  before  it's  half  over,  eh.?'' 

A  failed  battery  it  must  have  been,  for  no 
boche  bombers  came.  So  upon  the  candles 
being  fetched  in,  Old  Bob  resumed  at  the  point 
where  he  had  left  off.  He  sang  straight  through 
to  midnight,  nearly,  never  minding  the  story 

[161] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

telling  and  the  limerick  matching  and  the 
laughter  and  the  horse  play  going  on  below  him, 
and  rarely  repeating  a  song  except  by  request 
of  the  audience.  If  his  accompanist  at  the 
piano  knew  the  air,  all  very  well  and  good;  if 
not.  Old  Bob  sang  it  without  the  music. 

They  didn't  in  the  least  want  us  to  leave 
when  the  time  came  for  us  to  leave,  vowing 
that  the  fun  was  only  just  starting  and  that 
it  would  be  getting  better  toward  daylight. 
But  ahead  of  us  we  had  a  long  ride,  without 
lights,  over  pitchy-dark  roads,  so  we  got  into 
our  car  and  departed.  First,  though,  we  must 
promise  to  come  back  again  very  soon,  and 
must  join  them  in  a  nightcap  glass,  they  toast- 
ing us  w^ith  their  airmen's  toast,  which  seemed 
so  well  to  match  in  with  their  buoyant  spirits. 

When  next  I  passed  by  that  road  the  hangars 
were  empty  of  life  and  the  barracks  had  been 
torn  down.  The  great  offensive  had  started 
the  week  before,  and  on  the  third  day  of  it, 
as  we  learned  from  other  sources,  our  friends 

of   Night    Bombing    Squadron   Number   , 

obeying  an  order,  had  climbed  by  pairs  into 
their  big  planes  and  had  gone  winging  away  to 
do  their  share  in  the  air  fighting  w^here  the 
fighting  lines  were  locked  fast. 

There  w^as  need  just  then  for  every  available 
British  aeroplane — the  more  need  because  each 
day  showed  a  steadily  mounting  list  of  lost 
machines  and  lost  airmen.  I  doubt  whether 
many  of  those  blithesome  lads  came  out  of 

[  162] 


HAPPY    LANDINGS 


that   hell   alive,    and   doubt   very   much,    too, 
whether  I  shall  ever  see  any  of  them  again. 

So  always  I  shall  think  of  them  as  I  saw 
them  last — their  number  being  sixty  or  so 
and  the  average  age  twenty-two  and  a  half — 
grouped  at  the  doorway  of  their  quarters,  with 
the  candlelight  and  the  firelight  shining  behind 
them,  and  their  glasses  raised,  wishing  to  us 
"Happy  landings!" 


[163] 


CHAPTER  XI 
TRENCH  ESSENCE 


WHEN  our  soldiers  arrive  on  foreign 
soil,  almost  invariably,  so  it  has 
seemed  to  me  watching  them,  they 
come  ashore  with  serious  faces  and 
for  the  most  part  in  silence.  Their  eyes  are 
busy,  but  their  tongues  are  taking  vacation. 
For  the  time  being  they  have  lost  that  tre- 
mendous high-powered  exuberance  which  marks 
them  at  home,  in  the  camps  and  the  canton- 
ments, and  which  we  think  is  as  much  a  part 
of  the  organism  of  the  optimistic  American 
youth  as  his  hands  and  his  legs  are. 

I  noticed  this  thing  on  the  day  our  ship 
landed  at  an  English  port.  We  came  under 
convoy  in  a  fleet  made  up  almost  entirely  of 
transports  bearing  troops — American  volun- 
teers, Canadian  volunteers,  and  aliens  recruited 
on  American  soil  for  service  with  the  Allies. 
A  Canadian  battalion,  newly  organised,  marched 
off  its  ship  and  out  upon  the  same  pier  on 
which  the  soldiers  who  had  crossed  on  the 
vessel  upon  which  I  was  a  passenger  were  dis- 

[  164  ] 


TRENCH     ESSENCE 


embarking.  The  Canadians  behaved  like  school- 
boys on  a  holiday. 

It  was  not  what  the  most  consistent  de- 
fender of  the  climate  of  Great  Britain  would 
call  good  holidaying  weather  either.  A  while 
that  day  it  snowed,  and  a  while  it  rained,  and 
all  the  while  a  shrewish  wind  scolded  shrilly 
in  the  w^ireless  rig  and  rampaged  along  the 
damp  and  drafty  decks.  Nevertheless,  the  Ca- 
nadians were  not  to  be  daunted  by  the  inhos- 
pitable attitude  of  the  elements. 

One  in  three  of  them,  about,  carried  a  pen- 
nant bearing  the  name  of  his  home  town  or  his 
home  province,  or  else  he  carried  a  little  flag 
mounted  on  a  walking  stick.  Nine  out  of  ten, 
about,  were  whooping.  They  cheered  for  the 
ship  they  were  leaving;  they  cheered  for  the 
sister  ship  that  had  borne  us  overseas  along 
with  them;  they  cheered  to  feel  once  more  the 
solid  earth  beneath  their  feet;  they  cheered 
just  to  be  cheerful,  and,  cheering  so,  they  trav- 
ersed the  dock  and  took  possession  of  the  train 
that  stood  on  a  waterside  track  waiting  to  bear 
them  to  a  rest  camp.  I  imagine  they  were  still 
cheering  when  they  got  there. 

Now  if  you  knew  the  types  we  had  aboard 
our  packet  you  might  have  been  justified  in 
advance  for  figuring  that  our  outfit  would  be 
giving  those  joyous  Canadian  youngsters  some 
spirited  competition  in  the  matter  of  making 
noises.  We  carried  a  full  regiment  of  a  West- 
ern division,  largely  made  up,  as  to  officers  and 

[165] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

as  to  men,  of  national  guardsmen  from  the 
states  of  Colorado,  Wyoming  and  Washington. 
They  were  cow-punchers,  ranch  hands,  lumber- 
men, fruit  growers,  miners — outdoor  men  gen- 
erally. Eighty  men  in  the  ranks,  so  I  had 
learned  during  the  voyage,  were  full-blooded 
Indians  off  of  Northwestern  reservations.  We 
had  men  along  who  had  won  prizes  for  bronco- 
busting  and  bull-dogging  at  Frontier  Day  cele- 
brations in  Cheyenne  and  in  California;  also 
men  who  had  travelled  with  the  Wild  West 
shows  as  champion  ropers  and  experts  at  rough- 
riding.  Never  before,  I  am  sure,  had  one  vessel 
at  one  time  borne  in  her  decks  so  many  wind- 
tanned,  bow-legged,  hawk-faced,  wiry  Western 
Americans  as  this  vessel  had  borne. 

But  did  one  hear  the  lone-wolf  howl  as  our 
fellows  went  filing  down  the  gang-planks?  Did 
one  catch  the  exultant,  shrill  yip-yip-yip  of  .the 
round-up  or  the  far-carrying  war  yell  of  the 
Cheyenne  buck?  One  most  emphatically  did 
not.  If  those  three  thousand  and  odd  fellows 
had  all  been  pallbearers  officiating  at  the  put- 
ting away  of  a  dear  departed  friend  they  could 
not  have  deported  themselves  more  soberly. 
Nobody  carried  a  flag,  unless  you  would  except 
the  colour  bearers,  who  bore  their  colours 
furled  about  the  staffs  and  protected  inside  of 
tarpaulin  holsterings.  Nobody  waved  a  broad- 
brimmed  hat  either  in  salute  to  the  Old  World 
or  in  farewell  to  the  ocean.  Barring  the 
snapped  commands  of  the  officers,  the  clinking 

[166] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


in  unison  of  hobbed  and  heavy  boot  soles,  the 
shuffle  of  moving  bodies,  the  creak  of  leather 
girthings  put  under  strain,  and  occasionally  the 
sharp  clink  and  clatter  of  metal  as  some  dan- 
gling side  arm  struck  against  a  guard  rail  or 
some  man  shifted  his  piece,  the  march-off  was 
accomplished  without  any  noise  whatsoever. 
It  was  interesting — and  significant,  too,  I 
think — to  spy  upon  those  intent,  set  faces  and 
those  eager,  steady  eyes  as  the  files  went  by 
and  so  away,  bound,  by  successive  stages  of 
progress,  with  halts  between  at  sessioning  bil- 
lets and  at  training  barracks,  for  the  battle 
fronts  beyond  the  channel. 

As  between  the  Canadian  and  the  United 
States  soldiers  I  interpreted  this  striking  dif- 
ference in  demeanour  at  the  disembarking  hour 
somewhat  after  this  fashion :  To  a  good  many  of 
the  Dominion  lads,  no  doubt,  the  thing  was  in 
the  nature  of  a  home-coming,  for  they  had 
been  born  in  England.  A  great  many  more  of 
them  could  not  be  more  than  one  generation 
removed  from  English  birth.  Anyhow  and  in 
either  event,  they  as  thoroughly  belonged  to 
and  were  as  entirely  part  and  parcel  of  the 
Empire  as  the  islanders  who  greeted  them 
upon  the  piers.  One  way  or  another  they  had 
always  lived  on  British  soil  and  under  the 
shadow  of  the  Union  Jack.  They  were  not 
strangers;  neither  were  they  aliens,  even  though 
they  had  come  a  far  way;  they  were  joint  in- 
heritors with  native  Englishmen  of  the  glory 

[167] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

that  is  England's.  The  men  they  would  pres- 
ently fight  beside  were  their  own  blood  kin. 
Quite  naturally  therefore  and  quite  properly 
they  commemorated  the  advent  into  the  parent 
land  according  to  the  manner  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  when  he  strives  to  cover  up,  under  a 
mien  of  boisterous  enthusiasm,  emotions  of  a 
purer  sentiment.  I  could  conceive  some  of 
them  as  laughing  very  loudly  because  inside  of 
themselves  they  wanted  to  cry;  as  straining 
their  vocal  cords  the  better  to  ease  the  twitch- 
ings  at  their  heart  cockles. 

But  the  Americans,  even  if  they  wore  names 
bespeaking  British  ancestry — which  I  should 
say  at  an  offhand  guess  at  least  seventy-five 
per  cent  of  them  did — were  not  moved  by  any 
such  feelings.  Such  ties  as  might  link  their 
natures  to  the  breed  from  which  they  remotely 
sprang  were  the  thinnest  of  ties,  only  to  be 
revealed  in  times  of  stress  through  the  exhibi- 
tion of  certain  characteristics  shared  by  them 
in  common  with  their  very  distant  English  and 
Scotch  and  Irish  and  Welsh  kinsmen.  For 
England  as  England  they  had  no  affectionate 
yearnings.  England  wasn't  their  mother;  she 
was  merely  their  great -great-grandmother,  with 
whom  their  beloved  Uncle  Sam  had  had  at 
least  two  serious  misunderstandings.  To  all 
intents  and  purposes  this  was  a  strange  land — 
certainly  its  physical  characteristics  had  an 
alien  look  to  them — and  to  it  they  had  come 
as  strangers. 

[168] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


I  fancy,  though,  the  chief  reasons  for  their 
quiet  seriousness  went  down  to  causes  even 
deeper  than  this  one.  I  beheve  that  somehow 
the  importance  of  the  task  to  which  they  had 
dedicated  themselves  and  the  sense  of  the  re- 
sponsibihty  intrusted  to  them  as  armed  repre- 
sentatives of  their  own  country's  honour  were 
brought  to  a  focal  point  of  realisation  in  the 
minds  of  these  American  lads  by  the  putting 
of  foot  on  European  soil.  The  training  they 
had  undergone,  the  distances  they  had  trav- 
elled, the  sea  they  had  crossed — most  of  them, 
I  gathered,  had  never  smelt  salt  water  before 
in  their  lives — the  sight  of  this  foreign  city 
with  its  foreign  aspect — all  these  things  had 
chemically  combined  to  produce  among  them 
a  complete  appreciation  of  the  size  of  the  job 
ahead  of  them;  and  the  result  made  them 
dumb  and  sedate,  and  likewise  it  rendered 
them  aloof  to  surface  sensations,  leaving  them 
insulated  by  a  sort  of  noncommittal  pose  not 
commonly  found  among  young  Americans  in 
the  mass — or  among  older  Americans  in  the 
mass  for  that  matter. 

Perhaps  a  psychologist  might  prove  me 
wrong  in  these  amateur  deductions  of  mine. 
For  proof  to  bolster  up  my  diagnosis  I  can  only 
add  that  on  three  subsequent  occasions,  when 
I  saw  American  troops  ferrying  ashore  at 
French  ports,  they  behaved  in  identically  this 
same  fashion,  becoming  for  a  period  to  be 
measured  by  hours  practically  inarticulate  and 

[169] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


incredibly  earnest.  Correspondents  who  chanced 
to  be  with  me  these  three  several  times  were 
impressed  as  I  had  been  by  the  phenomenon. 

But  the  condition  does  not  last;  you  may  be 
very  sure  of  that.  If  there  exists  a  more 
adaptable  creature  than  the  American  soldier 
he  has  not  yet  been  tagged,  classified  and 
marked  Exhibit  A  for  identification.  Once  the 
newly  arrived  Yank  has  lost  his  sea  legs  and 
regained  his  shore  ones;  once  the  solemnity 
and  incidentally  the  novelty  of  the  ceremony 
of  his  entrance  into  Europe  has  worn  away; 
once  he  has  learned  how  to  think  of  dollars 
and  cents  in  terms  of  francs  and  centimes  and 
how  to  speak  a  few  words  in  barbarous  French 
— he  reverts  to  type.  His  native  irreverence  for 
things  that  are  stately  and  traditional  rises  up 
within  him,  renewed  and  sharpened;  and  from 
that  moment  forward  he  goes  into  this  business 
of  making  war  against  the  Hun  with  an  im- 
pudent grin  upon  his  face,  and  in  his  soul  an 
incurable  cheerfulness  that  neither  discomfort 
nor  danger  can  alloy,  and  a  joke  forever  on 
his  lips.  That  is  the  real  essence  of  the  trenches 
— the  humour  that  is  being  secreted  there  with 
the  grimmest  and  ghastliest  of  all  possible  trag- 
edies for  a  background. 

I  wouldn't  call  it  exactly  a  new  type  of  hu- 
mour, because  always  humour  has  needed  the 
contrast  of  dismalness  and  suffering  to  set  it 
off  effectively,  but  personally  I  am  of  the 
opinion  that  it  is  a  kind  of  humour  that  is 

[170] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


going  to  affect  our  literature  and  our  mode  of 
living  generally  after  the  war  is  ended. 

Bairnsfather,  the  English  sketch  artist,  did 
not  invent  the  particular  phase  of  whimsicality 
— the  essentially  distinctive  variety  of  serio- 
comic absurdity — which  has  made  the  world 
laugh  at  his  pictures  of  Old  Bill  and  Bert  and 
Alf.  He  did  a  more  wonderful  thing:  he  had 
the  wit  and  the  genius  to  catch  an  illusive  at- 
mosphere which  existed  in  the  trenches  before 
he  got  there  and  to  put  it  down  in  black  on 
white  without  losing  any  part  of  its  savoury 
qualities.  In  slightly  different  words  he  prac- 
tically told  me  this  when  I  ran  across  him 
up  near  the  Front  the  other  day  while  he  was 
setting  about  his  new  assignment  of  depicting 
the  humour  of  the  American  soldier  as  already 
he  had  depicted  that  of  the  British  Tommy. 
He  had,  he  said,  made  one  discovery  already — 
that  there  was  a  tremendous  difference  between 
the  two  schools. 

This  is  quite  true,  and  if  some  talented 
Frenchman — it  will  take  a  Frenchman,  of 
course — succeeds  in  making  sketches  that  will 
reflect  the  wartime  humour  of  the  French  sol- 
dier as  cleverly  as  Bairnsfather  has  succeeded 
at  the  same  job  with  the  British  high  private 
for  his  model  it  will  no  doubt  be  found  that 
the  poilu's  brand  of  humour  is  as  distinctively 
his  ov/n  as  the  American  soldier's  is  or  the 
English  soldier's  is. 

There  is  an  indefinable  something,  yet  some- 

[171] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

thing  structurally  French,  I  think,  in  the  fact 
that  when  Captain  Hamilton  Fish — called  Ham 
Fish  for  short — arrived  in  France  a  few  weeks 
before  this  was  written  the  French  soldiers  with 
whom  his  command  was  brigaded  immediately 
rechristened  him  Le  Capitaine  Jambon  Poisson, 
and  under  this  new  Gallicised  name  he  is  to-day 
one  of  the  best-known  personages  among  the 
French  in  the  country. 

Likewise  there  is  a  certain  African  individual- 
ity, or  rather  an  Afro-American  individuality, 
in  the  story  now  being  circulated  through  the 
expeditionary  forces,  of  the  private  in  one  of 
our  negro  regiments  who  bragged  at  his  com- 
pany mess  of  having  taken  out  a  life-insurance 
policy  for  the  full  amount  allowed  a  member  of 
the  Army  under  the  present  governmental  plan. 

"Whut  you  wan'  do  dat  fur?"  demanded  a 
comrade.  "You  ain't  married  an'  you  ain't 
got  no  fambly.  Who  you  goin'  leave  all  dat 
money  to  ef  you  gits  killed  .f^" 

"I  ain't  aimin'  to  git  killed,"  stated  the  first 
darky.  "Dat's  de  very  reason  I  taken  out  all 
dat  insho'ence." 

"How  come  you  ain't  liable  to  git  killed  jes' 
de  same  ez  ary  one  of  de  rest  of  us  is.'^" 

"W'y,  you  pore  ign'ant  fool,  does  you  s'pose 
w'en  Gin'el  Pershing  finds  out  he's  got  a  ten- 
thousand-dollar  nigger  in  dis  man's  Army  dat 
he's  gwine  take  any  chances  on  losin'  all  dat 
money  by  sendin'  me  up  to  de  Front  whar  de 
trouble  is.^^     Naw  suh-ree,  he  ain't!" 

[  172] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


From  a  commingling  of  memories  of  recent 
events  there  stands  out  a  thing  of  which  I  was 
an  eye-and-ear- witness  back  in  April,  when  the 
first  of  our  divisions  to  go  into  the  line  of  the 
great  battle  moved  up  and  across  France  from 
a  quieter  area  over  in  Lorraine,  where  it  had 
been  holding  a  sector  during  the  early  part  of 
the  spring.  Each  correspondent  was  assigned 
to  a  separate  regiment  for  the  period  of  the  ad- 
vance, being  quartered  in  the  headquarters  mess 
of  his  particular  regiment  and  permitted  to  ac- 
company its  columns  as  it  moved  forward  to- 
ward the  Picardy  Front.  That  is  to  say,  he 
was  permitted  to  accompany  its  columns,  but 
it  devolved  upon  him  to  furnish  his  own  mo- 
tive power.  Baggage  trains  and  supply  trains 
had  been  pared  to  the  quick  in  order  to  expedite 
fast  marching;  no  provision  for  transporting 
outsiders  had  been  made,  nor  would  any  such 
provision  have  been  permitted.  A  colonel  was 
lucky  if  he  had  an  automobile  to  himself  and 
his  adjutant;  generally  he  had  to  carry  a  French 
liaison  officer  or  two  along  with  him  in  addition 
to  his  personal  equipment. 

I  had  been  added  to  the  personnel  of  an  in- 
fantry regiment,  which  meant  I  could  not  steal 
an  occasional  ride  while  moving  from  one  billet 
to  another  on  the  jolting  limber  of  a  field  gun. 
Such  boons  were  vouchsafed  only  to  those  more 
fortunate  writers  who  belonged  for  the  time 
being  to  the  artillery  wing.  One  day  I  walked. 
I  was  lucky  in  that  I  did  not  have  to  carry  my 

[173] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

bedding  roll  and  my  haversack;  these  a  kindly 
disposed  ambulance  driver  smuggled  into  his 
wagon,  rules  and  regulations  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding. 

Another  day  the  philanthropic  lieutenant 
colonel  rode  his  saddle  horse  and  turned  over 
to  me  his  side  car,  the  same  being  a  sort  of 
combination  of  tin  bathtub  and  individual 
bootblack  stand,  hitched  onto  a  three-wheeled 
motor  cycle.  What  with  impedimenta  and  all, 
I  rather  overflowed  its  accommodations,  but 
from  the  bottoms  of  my  blistered  feet  to  the 
topmost  lock  of  my  wind-tossed  hair  I  was 
grateful  to  the  donor  as  we  went  scudding 
along,  the  steersman  and  I,  at  twenty -five  miles 
an  hour. 

On  a  third  day  I  hired  a  venerable  mare  and 
an  ancient  two-wheeled  covered  cart,  with  a 
yet  more  ancient  Norman  farmer  to  drive  the 
outfit,  and  under  the  vast  poke-bonnet  hood 
of  the  creaking  vehicle  the  twain  of  us  journeyed 
without  stopping,  from  early  breakfast  time 
until  nearly  sunset  time.  The  old  man  did  not 
know  a  word  of  English,  but  mile  after  mile 
as  we  plodded  along,  now  overtaking  the  troops 
who  had  started  their  hike  at  dawn,  and  now 
being  overtaken  by  them  as  the  antique  mare 
lost  power  in  her  ponderous  but  rheumatic  legs, 
he  conversed  at  me — not  with  me,  but  steadily 
at  me — in  his  provincial  patois,  which  was  the 
same  as  Attic  Greek  to  me,  or  even  more  so, 
inasmuch  as  the  only  French  I  have   is   res- 

[174] 


TRENCH     ESSENCE 


taurant  French,  which  begins  with  the  hors 
d'ceuvres  and  ends  just  south  of  the  fromages 
among  the  standard  desserts. 

Nevertheless,  I  deemed  it  the  part  of  poHte- 
ness  to  show  interest  by  making  a  response 
from  time  to  time  when  he  was  pausing  to  take 
a  fresh  breath.     So  about  once  in  so  often  I 
would  murmur  "Yes,"  with  the  rising  inflec- 
tion, or  "No,"  or  "Is  that  so?"  or  "Can  such 
things  really  be.^^ "    as  the  spirit  moved  me.    And 
always  he  seemed  perfectly  satisfied  with  my 
observations,  which  he  could  not  hear — I  should 
have    stated    before    now    that    among    other 
.  things  he  was  stone-deaf — and  wouldn't  have 
been  able  to  understand  even  if  he  had  heard 
them.    And  then  he  would  go  right  on  talking 
some  more.     From  his  standpoint,  I  am  con- 
vinced, it  was  a  most  enjoyable  journey  and  a 
highly  instructive  one  besides. 

Along  toward  sunset  we  ambled  with  the 
utmost  possible  deliberation  into  our  destina- 
tion. It  was  like  the  average  small  town  of 
Northwestern  France  in  certain  regards.  At  a 
little  distance  it  seemed  to  be  all  gable  ends 
jumbled  together  haphazard  and  anyhow,  as  is 
the  way  of  village  architecture  in  this  corner  of 
the  world;  and  following  an  almost  universal 
pattern  the  houses  scraped  sides  with  one  an- 
other in  a  double  file  along  the  twisting  main 
street,  only  swinging  back  to  form  a  sort  of 
irregular  square  in  the  centre. 

Here,  in  the  heart  of  things  communal,  the 

[175] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

grey  church  reared  its  bulk  above  all  lesser 
structures,  with  the  school  and  the  town  hall 
facing  it,  flanked  one  side  by  the  town  pump 
and  the  town  shrine  and  the  other  side  by  a 
public  pond,  where  the  horses  and  the  cows 
watered,  and  grave,  plump  little  French  chil- 
dren played  along  the  muddy  brink.  But  this 
place  had  an  air  of  antiquity  which  showed  it 
antedated  most  of  its  fellows  even  in  a  land 
where  everything  goes  back  into  bygone  cen- 
turies. 

Indeed,  the  guidebook  in  peace  days,  when 
people  used  guidebooks,  gave  it  upward  of  a 
page  of  fine  print — not  so  much  for  what  it 
now  was,  but  for  what  once  upon  a  time  it  had 
been.  Julius  Caesar  had  founded  it  and  named 
it — and  certain  of  the  ruins  of  the  original  bat- 
tlement still  stood  in  massy  but  shapeless 
clumps,  while  other  parts  had  been  utilised  to 
form  the  back  ends  of  houses  and  barns  and 
cowsheds.  One  of  the  first  of  those  pitiable 
caravans  of  innocents  that  swelled  the  ranks 
of  the  Children's  Crusade  had  been  recruited 
here;  and  through  the  ages  this  town,  inconse- 
quential as  it  had  become  in  these  latter  times, 
gave  to  France  and  to  the  world  a  great  chron- 
icler, a  great  churchman  and  at  least  one  great 
warrior. 

What  a  transformation  the  mere  coming  of 
our  troops  had  made!  In  the  public  pond  a 
squad  of  supply-trainsmen  were  sluicing  down 
four  huge  motor  trucks  that  stood  hub  deep 

[176] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


in  the  yellow  water — "bathing  the  elephants" 
our  fellows  called  this  job.  Over  rutted  paving 
stones  that  once  upon  a  time  had  bruised  the 
bare  feet  of  captured  Frankish  warriors  Missouri 
mules  were  yanking  along  the  baggage  wagons, 
and  their  dangling  trace  chains  clinked  against 
the  cobbles  just  as  the  fetters  on  the  ankles  of 
the  prisoners  must  have  clinked  away  back 
yonder. 

In  a  courtyard  where  Roman  soldiers  may 
have  played  at  knucklebones  a  portable  army 
range  sent  up  a  cloud  of  pungent  wood  smoke 
from  its  abbreviated  stack,  and  with  the  smell 
of  the  fire  was  mingled  a  satisfying  odour  of 
soldier-grub  stewing.  Plainly  there  would  be 
something  with  onions  in  it — probably  "Mulli- 
gan"— for  supper  this  night. 

Under  a  moss-hung  wall  against  which,  ac- 
cording to  tradition,  Peter  the  Hermit  stood 
with  the  cross  in  his  hand  calling  the  crusaders 
to  march  with  him  to  deliver  the  sepulchre  of 
the  Saviour  out  of  the  impious  hands  of  the 
heathen,  a  line  of  tired  Yankee  lads  were 
sprawled  upon  the  scanty  grass  doing  nothing 
at  all  except  resting.  There  were  wooden  signs 
lettered  in  English — "Regimental  Headquar- 
ters," and  "Hospital,"  and  "Intelligence  Of- 
fices"— fastened  to  stone  door  lintels  which 
time  had  seamed  and  scored  with  deep  lines 
like  the  wrinkles  in  an  old  dame's  face.  Khaki- 
clad  figures  were  to  be  seen  wherever  you 
looked. 

.  [177] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

Up  the  twisting  and  hilly  street  toiled  a 
company  belonging  to  my  particular  regiment, 
and  as  they  came  into  the  billeting  place  and 
knew  the  march  was  over,  the  wearied  and  bur- 
dened boys  started  singing  the  Doughboys' 
Song,  which  with  divers  variations  is  always 
sung  in  any  infantry  outfit  that  has  a  skeleton 
formation  of  old  Regular  Army  men  for  its 
core,  as  this  outfit  had,  and  which  to  the  ex- 
tent of  the  first  verse  runs  like  this: 

Here  come  the  doughboys 

With  dirt  behind  their  ears! 
Here  come  the  doughboys — 
Their  pay  is  in  arrears. 
The  cavalreCy  artilleree,  and  the  lousy  engineers — 
They  couldnt  lick  the  doughboys 
In  a  hundred  thousand  years. 

To  the  swinging  lilt  of  the  air  the  column 
angled  past  where  my  cart  was  halted;  and  as 
it  passed,  the  oflScial  minstrel  of  the  company 
was  moved  to  deliver  himself  of  another  verse, 
evidently  of  his  own  composition  and  dealing 
in  a  commemorative  fashion  with  recent  sen- 
timental experiences.  As  I  caught  the  lines  and 
set  them  down  in  my  notebook  they  were: 

Here  go  the  doughboys — 

Good-bye,  you  little  dears! 
Here  go  the  doughboys — 

The  girls  is  all  in  tears! 
The  June  Jems  and  the  gos songs 

And  the  jolly  old  mong  peres — 
Well,  they  wont  furgit  the  doughboys 

For  at  least  a  hundred  years! 

[178] 


TRENCH     ESSENCE 


The  troubadour  with  his  mates  rounded  the 
outjutting  corner  of  the  church  beyond  the 
shrine,  and  I  became  aware  of  a  highly  muddied 
youngster  who  sat  in  a  cottage  doorway  with 
his  legs  extending  out  across  the  curbing,  en- 
gaged in  literary  labours.  From  the  facts  that 
he  balanced  a  leather-backed  book  upon  one 
knee  and  held  a  stub  of  a  pencil  poised  above  a 
fair  clean  page  I  deduced  that  he  was  posting 
his  diary  to  date.  Lots  of  the  American  pri- 
vates keep  war  diaries — except  when  they  for- 
get to,  which  is  oftener  than  not. 

Three  months  before,  or  possibly  six,  the 
boy  in  the  doorway  would  have  been  a  strange 
figure  in  a  strange  setting.  About  him  was 
scarce  an  object,  save  for  the  shifting  figures 
of  his  own  kind,  to  suggest  the  place  whence 
he  hailed.  The  broom  that  leaned  against  the 
wall  alongside  him  was  the  only  new  thing  in 
view.  It  was  made  of  a  sheaf  of  willow  twigs 
bound  about  a  staff.  The  stone  well  curb  ten 
feet  away  was  covered  with  the  slow  lichen 
growth  of  centuries.  The  house  behind  him, 
to  judge  by  the  thickness  of  its  thatched  and 
wattled  roof  and  by  the  erosions  in  its  three- 
foot  walls  of  stone,  had  been  standing  for  hun- 
dreds of  years  before  the  great-granddaddies 
of  his  generation  fought  the  Indians  for  a  right 
to  a  home  site  in  the  wilderness  beyond  the 
Alleghanies. 

But  now  he  was  most  thoroughly  at  home — 
and  looked  it.     He  spoke,  addressing  a  com- 

[179] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

panion  stretched  out  upon  the  earth  across  the 
narrow  wav,  and  his  voice  carried  the  flat, 
sHghtly  nasal  accent  of  the  midwestern  corn- 
lands  : 

"Say,  Murf,  what's  the  name  of  this  blamed 
town,  anyhow?" 

"Search  me.  Maybe  they  ain't  never  named 
it.  I  know  you  can't  buy  a  decent  cigarette 
in  it,  'cause  I've  tried.  The  *Y'  ain't  opened 
up  yet  and  the  local  shops've  got  nothin'  that 
a  white  man'd  smoke,  not  if  he  never  smoked 
again.  ^Miat  difference  does  the  name  make,  any- 
way ?   All  these  towns  are  just  alike,  ain't  they?  " 

With  the  sophisticated  eyes  of  a  potential 
citizen  of,  say.  Weeping  Willow,  Nebraska,  the 
first  speaker  considered  the  wonderfully  quaint 
and  picturesque  vista  of  weathered,  slant-ended 
cottages  stretching  away  down  the  hill,  and 
then,  as  he  moistened  the  tip  of  his  pencil  with 
the  tip  of  his  tongue: 

"You  shore  said  a  mouthful — they're  all 
just  alike,  only  some's  funnier-lookin'  than  oth- 
ers. I  wonder  why  they  don't  paint  up  and 
use  a  little  whitewash  once  in  a  while.  Take 
that  little  house  yonder  now!"  He  pointed  his 
pencil  toward  a  thatched  cottage  over  whose 
crooked  lines  and  mottled  colours  a  painter 
would  rave.  "  If  you  was  to  put  a  decent  shingle 
roof  on  her  and  paint  her  white,  with  green 
trimmin's  round  the  doors  and  winders,  she 
wouldn't  be  half  bad  to  look  at.  Now,  would 
she?    No  cigarettes,  huh?    Nor  nothin'!"    In- 

[180] 


TRENCH     ESSENCE 


spiration  came  to  him  as  out  of  the  skies  and 
he  grinned  at  his  own  conceit.  "Tell  you  what 
— I'll  jest  put  it  down  as  'A'^owhere  in  France' 
and  let  it  go  at  that." 

On  the  following  day  my  friend,  the  lieuten- 
ant colonel,  brought  to  the  noonday  mess  a 
tale  which  I  thought  carried  a  distinct  flavour 
of  the  Yankee  trench  essence.  There  was  a 
captain  in  the  regiment,  a  last  year's  graduate 
of  the  Academy,  who  wore  the  shiniest  boots 
in  all  the  land  round  about  and  the  smartest 
Sam  Browne  belt,  and  who  owned  the  most 
ornate  pair  of  riding  trousers,  and  by  other 
signs  and  portents  showed  he  had  done  his 
best  to  make  the  world  safe  for  some  sporting- 
goods  emporium  back  in  the  States.  This 
captain,  it  seemed,  had  approached  a  sergeant 
who  was  in  charge  of  a  squad  engaged  in  po- 
licing the  village  street,  which  is  army  talk  for 
tidying  up  with  shovel  and  wheelbarrow. 

**See  here,  sergeant,"  demanded  the  young 
captain,  "why  don't  you  keep  your  men  moving 
properly.^" 

I'm  tryin'  to,  sir,"  answered  the  sergeant. 

Well,  look  at  that  man  yonder,"  said  the 
captain,  pointing  toward  a  languid  buck  private 
who  was  leaning  on  his  shovel.  "I've  been 
watching  him  and  he  hasn't  moved  an  inch, 
except  to  scratch  himself,  for  the  last  five 
minutes.  Now  go  over  there  and  stir  him  up! 
Shoot  it  into  him  good  and  proper!  I  want  to 
hear  what  you  say  to  him." 

[181] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


"Yes,  sir,"  said  the  sergeant,  saluting. 

With  no  suspicion  of  a  grin  upon  his  face  he 
charged  down  upon  the  deHnquent. 

"Here,  you!"  he  shouted.  "What  do  you 
mean,  loafin'  round  here  doin'  nothin'.?  What 
do  you  think  you  are,  anyhow — one  of  them 
dam'  West  Pointers.^" 

Floyd  Gibbons,  who  was  subsequently  so 
badly  wounded,  rode  one  day  into  a  battery 
of  heavy  artillery  on  the  Montdidier  Front. 
A  begrimed  battery  man  hailed  him  from  a 
covert  of  green  sods  and  camouflage  w^here  a 
six-inch  gun  squatted:  "You're  with  the  Chi- 
cago Tribune,  ain't  you.^^" 

"Yes,"  answered  Gibbons.     "T\aiy?" 

"Well,  I  just  thought  I'd  tell  you  that  the 
fellows  in  this  battery  have  got  a  favourite  line 
of  daily  readin'  matter  of  their  own,  these 
days." 

"What  do  you  call  it.^"  inquired  Gibbons. 

"We  call  it  the  Old  Flannel  Shirt,"  answered 
the  gunner.  "Almost  any  time  you  can  see  a 
fellow  round  here  goin'  through  his  copy  of  it 
for  hours  on  a  stretch.  He's  always  sure  to 
find  something  interestin'  too.  We  may  not 
be  what  you'd  call  bookworms  in  this  bunch, 
but  we  certainly  are  the  champion  little  cootie- 
chasers  of  the  United  States  Army." 

Bodv  vermin  or  wet  clothes  or  bad  billets  or 
the  chance  of  a  sudden  and  a  violent  taking-off 
— no  matter  what  it  is — the  American  soldier 
may  be  counted  upon  to  make  a  joke  of  it. 

[182] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


This  ability  to  distil  a  laugh  out  of  what  would 
cause  many  a  civilian  to  swear  or  weep  or  quit 
in  despair  serves  more  objects  than  one  in  our 
expeditionary  forces.  For  one  thing  it  keeps 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  Army  in  cheerful  mood 
to  have  the  mass  leavened  by  so  many  youths 
of  an  unquenchable  spirit.  For  another,  it 
provides  a  common  ground  for  fraternising 
when  Americans  and  Britishers  are  brigaded 
together  or  when  they  hold  adjoining  sectors; 
for  the  Britisher  in  this  regard  is  constituted 
very  much  as  the  American  is,  except  that  his 
humour  is  apt  to  assume  the  form  of  under- 
estimation of  a  thing,  whereas  the  American's 
fancy  customarily  runs  to  gorgeous  hyperbole 
and  arrant  exaggeration. 

In  a  certain  Canadian  battalion  that  has 
made  a  splendid  record  for  itself — though  for 
that  matter  you  could  say  the  same  of  every 
Canadian  battalion  that  has  crossed  the  sea 
since  the  war  began — there  is  a  young  chap 
whom  we  will  call  Sergeant  Fulton,  because  that 
is  not  his  real  name.  This  Sergeant  Fulton 
comes  from  one  of  the  states  west  of  the  Great 
Divide,  and  he  elected  on  his  own  account  and 
of  his  own  accord  to  get  into  the  fighting  nearly 
two  years  before  his  country  went  to  war.  In 
addition  to  being  a  remarkably  handsome  and 
personable  youth.  Sergeant  Fulton  is  probably 
the  best  rifle  shot  of  his  age  in  the  Dominion 
forces.  This  gift  of  his,  which  is  so  valuable 
a  gift  in  trench  fighting,  was  made  apparent  to 

[183] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

his  superior  officers  immediately  after  he  crossed 
the  Canadian  line  in  1915  to  enlist,  whereupon 
he  very  promptly  was  promoted  from  the 
ranks  to  be  a  non-com,  and  when  his  command 
got  into  action  in  France  he  was  detailed  for 
sniper  duty. 

At  that  congenial  employment  the  youngster 
has  been  distinguishing  himself  ever  since. 
Into  the  rifle  pits  young  Fulton  took  something 
besides  his  ability  to  hit  whatever  he  shot  at, 
and  his  marvellous  eyesight — he  took  a  most 
enormous  distaste  for  the  institution  of  roy- 
alty; and  this,  too,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
when  he  joined  up  he  swore  allegiance  to  His 
Gracious  Majesty  George  the  Fifth.  His  ideas 
of  royalty  seemingly  were  based  upon  things 
he  read  in  school  histories.  His  conception  of 
the  present  occupant  of  the  English  throne  was 
a  person  mentally  gaited  very  much  like  Henry 
the  Eighth  or  Richard  the  Third,  except  with 
a  worse  disposition  than  either  of  those  historic 
characters  had.  Apparently  he  conceived  of 
the  incumbent  as  rising  in  the  morning  and 
putting  on  a  gold  crown  and  sending  a  batch 
of  nobles  to  the  Tower,  after  which  he  enacted 
a  number  of  unjust  laws  and,  unless  he  felt 
better  toward  evening,  possibly  had  a  few  heads 
off. 

Acquaintance  with  his  comrades  at  arms 
served  to  rid  Sergeant  Fulton  of  some  of  these 
beliefs,  but  despite  broadening  influences  he 
has  never  ceased  to  wonder — generally  doing 

[184] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


his  wondering  in  a  loud  clear  voice — how  any 
man  who  loved  the  breath  of  freedom  in  his 
nostrils  found  it  endurable  to  live  under  a  king 
when  he  might  if  he  chose  live  under  a  Presi- 
dent named  Woodrow  Wilson. 

One  morning  just  at  daybreak  a  Canadian 
captain — who,  by  the  way,  told  me  this  tale — 
crawled  into  a  shell  hole  near  the  German  lines 
where  Sergeant  Fulton  and  two  other  expert 
riflemen  had  been  lying  all  night,  like  big-game 
hunters  at  a  water  hole,  waiting  for  dawn  to 
bring  them  their  chance.  One  of  Fulton's 
mates  was  a  Vancouver  lad,  the  other  a  London 
Tommy — a  typical  East-ender,  but  a  very 
smart  sniper. 

"Cap,"  whispered  Fulton,  from  where  he 
lay  stretched  on  his  belly  in  the  herbage  at  the 
edge  of  the  crater,  "you've  got  here  just  in 
time.  Ever  since  it  began  to  get  light  a  Fritzie 
has  been  digging  over  there  in  their  front  trench. 
I've  had  him  spotted  for  half  an  hour.  He 
has  to  squat  down  to  dig;  and  that's  telling 
on  his  back.  Before  long  I  figure  he's  going 
to  straighten  up  to  get  the  crick  out  of  himself. 
When  he  does  he'll  show  his  head  above  the 
parapet,  and  that's  when  I'm  going  to  part 
his  hair  in  the  middle  with  a  bullet.  Take  a 
squint.  Cap,  through  the  periscope  and  you'll 
be  able  to  locate  him,  dead  easy.  Then  stay 
right  there  and  you'll  see  the  surprise  party 
come  off." 

So  the  captain  took  a  squint  as  informally 

[185] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


requested.  Sure  enough,  a  hundred  yards 
away,  across  the  debatable  territory,  pocked 
with  ragged  shell  pits  and  traversed  by  its  two 
festering  brown  tangles  of  rusty  barbed  wire, 
he  could  see  the  flash  of  an  uplifted  shovel 
blade  and  see  the  brown  clods  flying  over  the 
lip  of  the  enemy's  parapet.  He  kept  watching. 
Presently  for  just  a  tiny  fraction  of  time  the 
round  cap  of  a  German  infantryman  appeared 
above  the  earthen  protection.  The  sergeant 
had  guessed  right,  and  the  sergeant's  gun 
spoke  once.  Once  was  enough — a  greenhorn 
at  this  game  would  have  known  that  much. 

For  there  was  a  shriek  over  there,  and  a  pair 
of  empty  outstretched  hands  were  to  be  seen 
for  one  instant,  with  the  fingers  clutching  at 
nothing;  and  then  they  disappeared,  as  their 
owner  collapsed  into  the  hole  he  had  been 
digging. 

Then,  according  to  the  captain,  as  the  ser- 
geant opened  his  rifle  breach  he  turned  toward 
the  Cockney  who  crowded  alongside  him,  and 
with  a  gratified  grin  on  his  face  and  a  weight 
of  sarcasm  in  his  voice  he  said:  "There  goes 
another  one,  eh,  bo,  for  King  and  Country.?" 

The  Londoner  answered  on  the  instant,  taking 
the  same  tone  in  the  reply  that  the  American 
had  taken  in  the  taunt.  "My  word,"  he  said, 
"but  Gawge  will  be  pleased  w'en  'e  'ears  wot 
you  done  fur  'im!" 

Three  of  us  made  a  long  trip  by  automobile 
to  pay  a  visit  to  a  coloured  regiment,  both  trip 

[186] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


and  visit  being  described  elsewhere  in  these 
writings.  The  results  more  than  repaid  us  for 
the  time  and  trouble.  One  of  the  main  com- 
pensations was  First  Class  Private  Cooksey, 
who,  because  he  used  to  be  an  elevator  at- 
tendant in  a  Harlem  apartment  house,  gave  his 
occupation  in  his  enlistment  blank  as  "indoor 
chauffeur."  It  was  to  First  Class  Private 
Cooksey  that  the  colonel  of  the  regiment,  seeing 
the  expression  on  the  other's  face  when  a 
Minenwerfer  from  a  German  mortar  fell  near 
by  on  the  day  the  command  moved  up  to  the 
Front,  and  made  a  hole  in  the  earth  deep 
enough  and  wide  enough  and  long  enough  to 
hide  the  average  smokehouse  in — it  was,  I 
repeat,  to  First  Class  Private  Cooksey  that 
the  colonel  put  this  question: 

"Cooksey,  if  one  of  those  things  drops  right 
here  alongside  of  us  and  goes  off,  are  you  going 
to  stay  by  me.^^" 

"Kurnal,"  stated  Private  Cooksey  with  sin- 
cerity, "I  ain't  goin'  tell  you  no  lie.  Ef  one 
of  them  things  busts  clost  to  me  I'll  jest  natch- 
elly  be  obliged  to  go  away  frum  here.  But 
please,  suh,  don't  you  set  me  down  as  no  de- 
serter. Jest  put  it  in  de  books  as  'absent  with- 
out leave,'  'cause  I'll  be  due  back  jest  ez  soon 
ez  I  kin  git  my  brakes  to  work." 

"But  what  if  the  enemy  suddenly  appears 
in  force  without  any  preliminary  bombard- 
ment.'^" pressed  the  colonel.  "What  do  you 
think  you  and  the  rest  of  the  boys  will  do  then.^  '* 

[187] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

"Kurnal,"  said  Cooksey  earnestly,  "we  may 
not  stick  by  you  but  we'll  shore  render  one 
service  anyway:  We'll  spread  de  word  all  over 
France  'at  de  Germans  is  comin'!" 

Nevertheless,  when  the  Germans  did  ad- 
vance it  is  of  record  that  neither  First  Class 
Private  Cooksey  nor  any  of  his  black  and 
brown  mates  showed  the  white  feather  or  the 
yellow  streak  or  the  turned  back.  Those  to 
whom  the  test  came  stayed  and  fought,  and  it 
was  the  Germans  who  went  away. 

It  was  a  member  of  the  Fifteenth  who  in 
all  apparent  seriousness  suggested  to  his  cap- 
tain that  it  might  be  a  good  idea  to  cross  the 
carrier  pigeon  with  the  poll  parrot  so  that  when 
a  bird  came  back  from  the  Front  it  would  be 
able  to  talk  its  own  message  instead  of  bringing 
it  along  hitched  to  its  shank. 

Speaking  of  carrier  pigeons  reminds  me  of  a 
yarn  that  may  or  may  not  be  true — it  sounds 
almost  too  good  to  be  true — that  is  being  re- 
lated at  the  Front.  The  version  most  fre- 
quently told  has  it  that  a  half  company  of  a 
regiment  in  the  Rainbow  Division  going  for- 
ward early  one  morning  in  a  heavy  fog  for  a 
raid  across  No  Man's  Land  carried  along  with 
the  rest  of  the  customary  equipment  a  homing 
pigeon.  The  pigeon  in  its  wicker  cage  swung 
on  the  arm  of  a  private,  who  likewise  was  bur- 
dened with  his  rifle,  his  extra  rounds  of  ammu- 
nition, his  trenching  tool,  his  pair  of  wire  cut- 
ters, his  steel  helmet,  his  gas  mask,  his  emer- 

[188] 


TRENCH     ESSENCE 


gency  ration  and  quite  a  number  of  other  more 
or  less  cumbersome  items. 

It  was  to  be  a  surprise  attack  behind  the 
cloak  of  the  fog,  so  there  was  no  artillery 
preparation  beforehand  nor  barrage  fire  as  the 
squads  climbed  over  the  top  and  advanced  into 
the  mist-hidden  beyond.  Behind,  in  the  posts 
of  observation  and  in  the  post  of  command — 
"P.O."  and  "P.C."  these  are  called  in  the 
algebraic  terminology  of  modern  war — the 
colonel  and  his  aids  and  his  intelligence  officers 
waited  for  the  sound  of  firing,  and  when  after 
some  minutes  the  distant  rattle  of  rifle  fire 
came  to  their  ears  they  began  calculating  how 
long  reasonably  it  might  be  before  word  reached 
them  by  one  or  another  medium  of  communi- 
cation touching  on  the  results  of  the  foray. 
But  the  ground  telephone  remained  mute,  and 
no  runner  returned  through  the  fog  with  tidings. 
The  suspense  tautened  as  time  passed. 

Suddenly  a  pigeon  sped  into  view  flying 
close  to  the  earth.  With  scores  of  pairs  of 
eager  eyes  following  it  in  its  course  the  winged 
messenger  circled  until  it  located  its  porta- 
ble cote  just  behind  the  colonel's  position, 
and  fluttering  down  it  entered  itsj  familiar 
shelter. 

An  athletic  member  of  the  staff  hustled  up 
the  ladder.  In  half  a  minute  he  was  tumbling 
down  again,  clutching  in  one  hand  the  little 
scroll  of  paper  that  he  had  found  fastened  about 
the  pigeon's  leg.     With  fingers  that  trembled 

[189] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

in  anxiety  the  colonel  unrolled  the  paper  and 
read  aloud  what  was  written  upon  it. 

What  he  read,  in  the  hurried  chirography  of 
a  kid  private,  was  the  following  succinct  state- 
ment: "I'm  tired  of  carrying  this  derned  bird." 

In  London  one  night  Don  Martin,  of  the 
New  York  Herald,  and  I  were  crossing  the 
Strand  just  above  Trafalgar  Square.  In  the 
murk  of  the  unlighted  street  we  bumped  into  a 
group  of  four  uniformed  figures.  Looking  close 
we  made  out  that  one  was  an  American  soldier, 
that  one  was  a  lanky  Scot  in  kilts,  slightly 
under  the  influence  of  something  even  more 
exhilarating  than  the  music  of  the  pipes,  and 
that  the  remaining  two  were  English  privates. 
We  gathered  right  away  that  an  international 
discussion  of  some  sort  was  under  way.  At 
the  moment  of  our  approach  the  American,  a 
little  dark  fellow  who  spoke  with  an  accent 
that  betrayed  his  Italian  nativity,  had  the 
floor,  or  rather  he  had  the  sidewalk.  We  halted 
in  the  half -darkness  to  listen. 

"It's  lika  thees,"  expounded  the  Yanko- 
Italian,  "w'en  I  say  *I  should  worry'  it  mean — 
it  mean — why,  it  mean  I  shoulda  not  worry. 
You  getta  me,  huh?" 

He  glanced  about  him,  plainly  pleased  with 
the  very  clear  and  comprehensive  explanation 
of  this  expressive  bit  of  Americanism,  which 
had  come  to  him  in  a  sudden  burst  of  inspira- 
tion. 

The  others  stared  at  him  blankly.     It  was 

[190] 


TRENCH     ESSENCE 


one  of  the  Englishmen  who  broke  the  silence. 

"You  'ave  nothin'  to  worry  habout  hat  all, 
and  so  you  say  that  you  hare  worry  in' — his 
that  hit?"  he  inquired.  The  American  nodded. 
"Well,  then,  hall  Hi  can  say  his  hit  sounds  like 
barmy  Yankee  nonsense  to  me." 

"Lusten  here,  laddie,  to  me,"  put  in  the 
Scotchman.  "If  youVe  naught  to  worry 
about,  why  speak  of  it  at  all.'^  That's  whut  I 
would  be  pleased  to  know." 

"Hoh,  never  mind,"  spoke  up  the  second 
Englishman;  "let's  go  get  hanother  drink  at 
the  pub." 

"You're  too  late,"  stated  his  countryman  in 
lachrymose  tones.  "While  we've  been  chin- 
chinnin'  'ere  the  bloomin'  pub  'as  closed — it's 
arfter  hours  for  a  drink." 

But  the  canny  Scot  already  was  feeling  about 
with  a  huge  paw  in  the  back  folds  of  his  kilt. 
From  some  mysterious  recess  he  slowly  drew 
forth  a  flat  flask. 

"Lads,"  he  stated  happily,  "in  the  language 
of  our  American  friend  here,  we  should  worry, 
because  as  it  happens,  thanks  to  me  own  fore- 
thought, we  ha'  na  need  to  concern  ourselves 
wi'  worryin'  at  all,  d'ye  ken.^^  Ha'  the  furst 
nip,  Yank!" 

This  recital  would  not  be  complete  did  I 
fail  to  include  in  it  a  paragraph  or  so  touch- 
ing on  the  humorous  proclivities  of — guess 
who! — the  commander  of  a  German  sub- 
marine, no  less;  a  person  who  operated  last 

[  191  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

winter  mainly  off  the  southernmost  tip  of 
Ireland  with  occasional  incursions  into  the 
British  Channel.  This  facetious  Teuton  was 
known  to  the  crews  of  the  British  and  x\merican 
destroyers  that  did  their  best  to  sink  him — and 
finally,  it  is  believed,  did  sink  him — as  Kelly. 
Indeed  in  the  derisive  messages  that  this  deep- 
sea  joker  used  to  send  over  the  wireless  to  our 
stations  he  customarily  signed  himself  by  that 
name. 

One  day  shortly  before  Kelly's  U-boat 
disappeared  altogether  a  commander  of  an 
American  destroyer  was  sending  by  radio  to  a 
French  port  a  message  giving  what  he  believed 
to  be  the  probable  location  of  the  pestiferous 
but  cheerful  foe.  It  must  have  been  that  the 
subject  of  his  communication  was  listening  in 
on  the  air  waves  and  that  he  knew  the  code 
which  the  American  was  that  day  employing. 
For  all  at  once  he  broke  in  with  his  own  wireless, 
and  this  was  what  the  astonished  operator  at 
the  receiving  station  on  shore  got : 

"Your  longitude  is  fine,  your  latitude  is  rotten. 
This  place  is  getting  too  warm  for  me.  I'm  going 
to  beat  it.     Good-bye.     Kelly." 

Shortly  after  the  first  division  of  our  new 
National  Army  reached  France  a  group  of 
fifty  men  were  sent  from  it  as  replacements  in 
the  ranks  of  an  old  National  Guard  regiment 
which  had  been  over  for  some  time  and  which 
had  suffered  casualties  and  losses.  When  the 
squad  went  forward  to  their  new  assignment 

[192] 


TRENCH    ESSENCE 


the  general  commanding  the  brigade  from  which 
the  chosen  fifty  had  been  drawn  sent  to  the 
commander  of  the  regiment  for  which  they  were 
bound  a  letter  reading  somewhat  after  this 
style : 

"There  are  not  better  men  in  our  Army 
anywhere  than  the  fifty  I  am  giving  you,  in 
accordance  with  an  order  received  by  me  from 
General  Headquarters,  Please  see  to  it  that 
no  one  in  your  regiment,  whether  officer  or 
private,  refers  by  word,  look,  deed  or  gesture  to 
the  circumstances  under  which  these  fifty  men 
entered  the  service.  Drafted  men,  regulars  and 
volunteers  are  all  on  the  same  footing,  and 
merely  because  my  men  came  in  with  the  draft 
and  yours  to  a  large  extent  came  in  a  little 
earlier  is  no  reason  why  any  discrimination 
should  be  permitted  in  any  quarter." 

A  few  weeks  after  the  transfer  had  been 
accomplished  the  brigadier  met  the  colonel,  and 
recalling  to  the  latter  the  sense  of  the  letter  he 
had  written  inquired  whether  there  had  been 
any  suggestion  of  superiority  on  the  part  of  the 
former  National  Guardsmen  toward  the  new 
arrivals. 

"General,"  broke  out  the  colonel,  "do  vou 
know  what  those  infernal  cheeky  scoundrels  of 
yours  have  been  doing  ever  since  they  joined.'^ 
Well,  I'm  going  to  tell  you.  They've  been  walk- 
ing to  and  fro  in  my  regiment  with  their  noses 
stuck  up  in  the  air,  calling  my  boys  'draft- 
dodgers!'" 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

It's  the  essence  of  the  trenches.  And  it's 
that — plus  the  courage  they  bring  and  the 
enthusiasm  they  have — which  is  winning  this 
war  sooner  than  some  of  the  croakers  at  home 
expect  it  to  be  won. 


[194] 


CHAPTER  XII 
BEING  BOMBED  AND  RE-BOMBED 


AS  I  GO  to  and  fro  in  the  land  I  some- 
/%      times  wonder  why  the  Germans  keep 

Y     %^    a-picking  on  me.     As  heaven  is  my 
judge  I  tried  to  tell  the  truth  about 

them  and  their  armies  when  I  was  with  them; 
but  then,  maybe  that's  the  reason.    At  any  rate 
I  am  here  to  testify  that  whenever  I  stop  at  a 
place  in  England  or  France  either  a  battery  of 
long-range  guns  shells  it  or  else  a  hostile  aero- 
plane happens  along  and  bombs  the  town.    The 
thing  is  more  than  a  coincidence.    It  is  getting 
to  be  a    habit,    an    unhealthy  habit  at  that. 
There  must  be  method  in  it.     And  yet  I  have 
tried  to  bear  myself  in  a  modest  and  unostenta- 
tious way  during  this  present  trip.     If  in  the 
reader's   judgment   the   personal   pronoun   has 
occurred   and   recurred    with   considerable  fre- 
quency in  my  writings  I  would  say:  Under  the 
seemingly   quaint   but   necessary   rules   of   the 
censorship  as  conducted  in  these  parts  the  only 
individual  of  American  extraction  at  present 
connected  in  any  way  with  war  activities  over 

[195] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

here  whom  I  may  mention  in  my  writings  other 
than  General  Pershing  is  myself.  Since  the 
general  to  date  has  not  figured  to  any  extent 
in  my  personal  experiences  I  am  perforce  driven 
to  doing  pieces  largely  about  what  I  have  seen 
and  heard  and  felt. 

Particularly  is  this  true  of  these  bombings 
and  shellings.  I  repeat  that  I  cannot  imagine 
why  the  boche  should  single  out  a  quiet,  simple, 
private  citizen  for  such  attentions.  It  does  not 
seem  fair  that  I  should  ever  be  their  target  while 
shining  marks  move  about  the  landscape  with 
the  utmost  impunity.  The  German  has  a  name 
for  being  efficient  too.  More  than  once  in  my 
readings  I  have  seen  his  name  coupled  with  the 
word  efficiency.  Take  brigadier  generals  for 
example.  Almost  any  colonel  of  our  Expedi- 
tionary Forces  in  France,  and  particularly  a 
senior  colonel  whose  name  is  well  up  in  the  list, 
will  tell  you  in  confidence  there  are  a  number  of 
brigadiers  over  here  who  could  easily  be  spared 
and  who  would  never  be  missed.  Yet  a  brigadier 
general  may  move  about  from  place  to  place  in 
his  automobile  in  comparative  safety.  But  just 
let  me  go  to  the  railroad  station  to  buy  a  ticket 
for  somewhere  and  immediately  the  news  is 
transmitted  by  a  mysterious  occult  influence  to 
the  Kaiser  and  he  tells  the  Crown  Prince  and 
the  Crown  Prince  calls  up  von  Hindenburg  or 
somebody,  and  inside  of  fifteen  minutes  the 
hands,  August  and  Heinie,  are  either  load- 
ing up   the   long-rangers   or  getting  the   most 

[196] 


BEING    BOMBED    AND    RE-BOMBED 

dependable     bombing      Gotha     out     of     the 
sheds. 

For  nearly  four  weeks  the  raiders  stayed 
away  from  London.  I  arrived  in  London  sick 
with  bronchitis  and  went  to  bed  in  a  hotel.  That 
night  the  Huns  flew  over  the  Channel  and 
spattered  down  inflammables  and  explosives 
to  their  heart's  content.  One  chunk  of  a  shell 
fell  in  the  street  within  a  few  yards  of  my  bed- 
room window,  gouging  a  hole  in  the  roadway. 
A  bomb  made  a  mighty  noise  and  did  some 
superficial  damage  in  a  park  close  by.  It  was 
my  first  experience  at  being  bombed  from  on 
high,  and  any  other  time  I  should  have  taken  a 
lively  interest  in  the  proceedings;  but  I  was  too 
sick  to  get  up  and  dress  and  too  dopy  from  the 
potions   I   had   taken   to   awaken   thoroughly. 

But  the  next  night,  when  I  was  convalescent, 
and  the  following  night,  when  I  was  well  along 
the  road  toward  recovery  and  able,  in  fact,  to 
sit  up  in  bed  and  dodge,  back  came  Mister  Boche 
and  repeated  the  original  performance  with 
variations. 

In  order  to  get  away  from  the  London  fogs, 
which  weren't  doing  my  still  tender  throat  any 
good,  I  ran  down  to  a  certain  peaceful  little 
seaside  resort  on  the  east  coast  of  England, 
reaching  there  in  the  gloaming.  What  did  the 
enemy  do  but  sprinkle  bombs  all  about  the 
neighbourhood  within  an  hour  after  I  got  there .^ 
He  went  away  at  ten  the  same  night,  I  the 
following  morning  at  six-forty-five. 

[197] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

A  delayed  train  was  all  that  kept  me  from 
reaching  Paris  coincidentally  with  the  first 
raiders  who  had  attacked  Paris  in  a  period  of 
months.  The  raiders  covered  up  their  disap- 
pointment by  murdering  a  few  helpless  non- 
belligerents  and  departed,  to  return  the  next 
evening  when  I  was  present.  I  was  domiciled 
in  Paris  on  that  memorable  Saturday  when  the 
great  long-distance  gun  began  its  bombard- 
ment of  the  city  from  the  forest  of  Saint-Gobain 
nearly  seventy  miles  distant.  The  first  shell 
descended  within  two  hundred  yards  of  where 
I  stood  at  a  window  and  I  saw  the  smoke  of  its 
explosion  and  saw  the  cloud  of  dust  and  pulver- 
ized debris  that  rose;  the  jar  of  the  crash  shook 
the  building.  Throughout  the  following  day, 
which  was  Palm  Sunday — only  we  called  it 
Bomb  Sunday — the  shelling  continued.  I  was 
there,  naturally. 

On  Monday  morning  I  started  for  Soissons. 
So  the  gunners  of  the  long-distance  gun  playing 
on  Paris  took  a  vacation,  which  lasted  until  the 
day  after  my  party  returned  from  the  north. 
We  got  into  the  Gare  du  Nord  late  one  night; 
the  big  gun  opened  up  again  early  the  next 
morning.  I  am  not  exaggerating;  merely 
reciting  a  sequence  of  facts. 

For  nearly  two  years  the  Germans  had  left 
poor  battered  Soissons  pretty  much  alone, 
though  it  was  within  easy  reach  of  their  how- 
itzers; moreover,  one  of  their  speedy  flying 
machines  could  reach  Soissons  from  the  German 

[198] 


BEING    BOMBED    AND    RE- BOM  BED 

lines  south  of  Laon  within  five  minutes.  But, 
as  I  say,  they  rather  left  it  alone.  Perhaps  in 
their  kindly  sentimental  way  they  were  satisfied 
with  their  previous  handiwork  there.  They 
had  pretty  well  destroyed  the  magnificent  old 
cathedral.  It  was  not  quite  so  utter  a  ruin  as 
the  cathedral  at  Arras  is,  or  the  cathedral  at 
Rheims,  or  the  Cloth  Hall  at  Ypres,  or  the  Uni- 
versity at  Louvain;  nevertheless,  I  assume  that 
from  the  Prussian  point  of  view  the  job  was  a 
fairly  complete  one. 

The  wonderful,  venerable  glass  windows, 
which  can  never  be  replaced,  had  been  shattered 
to  the  last  one,  and  the  lines  of  the  splendid 
dome  might  now  only  be  traced  like  the  curves 
of  tottering  arches,  swinging  up  and  out  like 
the  ribs  of  a  cadaver,  and  by  a  lacework  of 
roofage  where  thousands  of  bickering  ravens, 
those  black  devil  birds  of  desolation,  now 
fluttered  and  cawed,  and  befouled  with  their 
droppings  the  profaned  sanctuary  below. 
Altogether  it  was  one  of  the  most  satisfactory 
monuments  to  Kultur  to  be  found  anywhere  in 
Europe  to-day. 

Nor  had  the  community  at  large  been  slighted. 
Everybody  knows  how  thorough  are  the  armies 
of  the  anointed  War  Lord.  Relics  which 
dated  back  to  the  days  of  Clovis  had  been 
battered  out  of  all  hope  of  restoration;  things 
of  antiquity  and  of  inestimable  historic  value 
lay  shattered  in  wreckage.  Furthermore,  from 
time  to  time,  in  1914  and  1915  and  even  in 

[199] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

1916,  when  no  military  advantage  was  to  be 
derived  from  visiting  renewed  affliction  upon 
the  vicinity  and  when  no  victims,  save  old  men 
and  women  and  innocent  children,  were  likely 
to  be  added  to  the  grand  total  of  the  grander 
tally  which  Satan,  as  chief  bookkeeper,  is 
keeping  for  the  Kaiser,  the  guns  had  blasted 
away  at  the  ancient  city,  leveling  a  homestead 
here  and  decimating  a  family  there. 

However,  since  the  early  part  of  1916  they 
Lad  somehow  rather  spared  Soissons.  But  the 
train  bearing  us  was  halted  within  three  miles 
of  the  station  because,  after  keeping  the  peace 
for  nearly  two  years,  the  enemy  had  picked 
upon  that  particular  hour  of  that  particular 
afternoon  to  renew  his  most  insalubrious  at- 
tentions per  nine-inch  mortars.  Therefore  we 
entered  afoot,  bearing  our  luggage,  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  whistling  projectiles  and  clattering 
chimney-pots  and  smashing  walls. 

In  Soissons  w^e  spent  tw^o  nights.  Both 
nights  the  Germans  shelled  the  town  and  on 
the  second  night,  in  addition,  bombed  it  from 
aeroplanes.  It  may  have  been  fancy,  but  as 
we  came  away  in  a  car  borrowed  from  a  kindly 
French  staff  officer  it  seemed  to  us  thai  the 
firing  behind  us  was  lessening. 

From  press  headquarters  near  G.  H.  Q.  of 
the  Amex  Forces  we  motored  one  day  to  Nancy 
for  a  good  dinner  at  a  locally  famous  cafe. 
Simultaneously  with  our  advent  the  foe's  air- 
men showed  up  and  the  alerte  was  sounded 

[  200  ] 


BEING    BOMBED    AND    RE-BOMBED 

for  a  gas  attack.  As  between  the  prospect  of 
spending  the  evening  in  an  abri  and  staying 
out  in  the  open  air  upon  the  road  we  chose  the 
latter,  and  so  we  turned  tail  and  ran  back  to 
the  comparative  quiet  of  the  front  lines.  A 
little  later  a  cross-country  journey  necessitated 
our  changing  cars  at  Bar-le-Duc.  The  connect- 
ing train  was  hours  behind  its  appointed  min- 
ute, as  is  usual  in  these  days  of  disordered  time 
cards,  and  while  we  waited  hostile  airships  ap- 
peared flying  so  high  they  looked  like  bright 
iridescent  midges  flitting  in  the  sunshine.  As 
they  swung  lower,  to  sow  bombs  about  the 
place,  antiaircraft  guns  opened  on  them  and 
they  departed. 

That  same  night  our  train,  travelling  with 
darkened  carriages,  was  held  up  outside  of 
Chalons,  while  enemy  aircraft  spewed  bombs 
at  the  tracks  ahead  of  us  and  at  a  troop  convoy 
passing  through.  The  wreckage  was  aflre  when 
we  crawled  bv  on  a  snail's  schedule  an  hour 
or  so  later. 

Two  of  us  went  to  pay  a  visit  to  a  regimental 
mess  in  a  sector  held  by  our  troops.  The 
colonel's  headquarters  were  in  a  small  wrecked 
village  close  up  to  the  frontier.  This  village 
had  been  pretty  well  smashed  up  in  1914  and 
in  1915,  but  during  the  trench  warfare  that 
succeeded  in  this  district  no  German  shells  had 
scored  a  direct  hit  within  the  communal  con- 
fines. Yet  the  enemy  that  night,  without  prior 
warning  and  without  known  provocation,  elect- 

[  201  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

ed  to  break  the  tacit  agreement  for  localised 
immunity.  The  bombardment  began  with  a 
shock  and  a  jar  of  impact  shortly  after  we  had 
retired  to  bed  on  pallets  upon  the  floor  in  the 
top  story  of  what  once,  upon  a  happier  time, 
had  been  the  home  of  a  prominent  citizen.  It 
continued  for  three  hours,  and  I  will  state  that 
our  rest  was  more  or  less  interrupted.  It  slack- 
ened and  ceased,  though,  as  we  departed  in 
the  morning  after  breakfast,  and  thereafter 
for  a  period  of  weeks  during  which  we  remained 
away  all  was  tranquil  and  unconcussive  there 
in  that  cluster  of  shattered  stone  cottages. 

Another  time  we  made  a  two-day  expedition 
to  the  zone  round  Verdun.  The  great  spring 
offensive,  off  and  away  to  the  westward,  was 
then  in  its  second  week  and  the  Verdun  area 
enjoyed  comparative  peace.  Nevertheless,  and 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  seven  big 
vociferous  shells  came  pelting  down  upon  an 
obscure  hamlet  well  back  behind  the  main  de- 
fences within  twenty  minutes  after  we  had 
stopped  there.  One  burst  in  a  courtyard  out- 
side a  house  where  an  American  general  was 
domiciled  w^ith  his  staff,  and  when  we  came  in 
to  pay  our  respects  his  aids  still  were  gathering 
up  fragments  of  the  shell  casing  for  souvenirs. 
The  general  said  he  couldn't  imagine  why  the 
Hun  should  have  decided  all  of  a  sudden  to 
pay  him  this  compliment;  but  we  knew  why, 
or  thought  we  knew:  It  was  all  a  part  of  the 
German  scheme  to  give  us  chronic  cold  feet. 

[  202  ] 


BEING    BOMBED    AND    RE-BOMBED 

At  least,  we  so  diagnosed  the  thing  privately. 

As  a  result  of  this  sort  of  experience,  con- 
tinuing through  a  period  of  months,  I  feel  that 
I  have  become  an  adept  of  sorts  at  figuring  the 
sensations  of  a  bombee.  I  flatter  myself  also 
that  I  have  acquired  some  slight  facility  at 
appraising  the  psychology  of  towns  and  cities 
persistently  and  frequently  under  shell  or  aerial 
attack.  In  the  main  I  believe  it  may  be  taken 
as  an  accepted  fact  that  the  inhabitants  of  a 
small  place  behave  after  rather  a  different 
fashion  from  the  way  in  which  the  inhabitants 
of  a  great  city  may  be  counted  upon  to  bear 
themselves.  For  example,  there  is  a  difference 
plainly  to  be  distinguished,  I  think,  between 
the  people  of  London  and  the  people  of  Paris; 
and  a  difference  likewise  between  the  people  of 
Paris  and  the  people  of  Nancy.  Certainly  I  have 
witnessed  a  great  number  of  sights  that  were 
humorous  with  the  grim  and  perilous  humour 
of  wartimes,  and  by  the  same  token  I  have 
witnessed  a  manifold  number  of  others  that 
were  fraught  with  the  very  essence  of  trag- 
edy. 

All  France  to-day  is  one  vast  heart-breaking 
tragedy  that  is  compounded  of  a  million  lesser 
tragedies.  You  note  that  the  door-opener  at 
your  favourite  cafe  in  Paris  uses  his  left  hand 
only,  and  then  you  see  that  his  right  arm,  with 
the  hand  cased  in  a  tight  glove,  swings  in  stiff 
uselessness  from  his  shoulder.  It  is  an  artificial 
arm;  the  real  one  was  shot  away.    The  barber 

[  203  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

who  shaves  you,  the  waiter  who  serves  you, 
the  chauffeur  who  drives  you  about  in  his  taxi- 
cab  moves  with  a  limping  awkward  gait  that 
betrays  the  fact  of  a  false  leg  harnessed  to  a 
mutilated  stump. 

In  a  sufficiently  wide  passage  a  couple  coming 
toward  you — a  woman  in  nurse's  garb  and  a 
splendid  young  boy  soldier  with  decorations 
on  his  breast — bump  into  you,  almost,  it  would 
seem,  by  intent.  As  mentally  you  start  to 
execrate  the  careless  pair  for  their  inexcusable 
disregard  of  the  common  rights  of  pedestrians 
you  see  there  is  a  deep,  newly  healed  scar  in 
the  youth's  temple  and  that  his  eyes  stare 
straight  ahead  of  him  with  an  unwinking 
emptiness  of  expression,  and  that  his  fine  young 
face  is  beginning  to  wear  that  look  of  blank, 
bleak  resignation  which  is  the  mark  of  one  who 
will  walk  for  all  the  rest  of  his  days  on  this 
earth  in  the  black  and  utter  void  of  blindness. 

Behind  the  battle  lines  you  often  see  long 
lines  of  men  whose  ages  are  anywhere  between 
forty  and  fifty — tired,  dirty,  bewhiskered  men 
worn  frazzle-thin  by  what  they  have  under- 
gone; men  who  should  be  at  home  with  their 
wives  and  bairns  instead  of  toiling  through 
wet  and  cold  and  misery  for  endless  leagues 
over  sodden  roads. 

Their  backs  are  bent  beneath  great  unwieldy 
burdens;  their  hands  where  they  grip  their 
rifles  are  blue  from  the  chill;  their  sore  and 
weary  feet  falter  as  they  drag  them,  booted  in 

[  204-  ] 


BEING    BOMBED    AND    RE-BOMBED 

stiff  leather  and  bolstered  with  mud,  from  one 
cheerless  billet  to  another.  But  they  go  on, 
uncomplainingly,  as  they  have  been  going  on 
uncomplainingly  since  the  second  year  of  this 
war,  doing  the  thankless  and  unheroic  labour 
at  the  back  that  the  ranks  at  the  front  may  be 
kept  filled  with  those  whom  France  has  left  of 
a  suitable  age  for  fighting. 

You  see  that  the  highways  are  kept  in  repair 
by  boys  of  twelve  or  thirteen  and  by  grandsires 
in  their  seventies  and  their  eighties,  and  by 
crippled  soldiers,  who  work  from  daylight  until 
dusk  upon  the  rock  piles  and  the  earth  heaps; 
that  the  fields  are  being  tilled — and  how  well 
they  are  being  tilled! — by  young  women  and 
old  women;  that  the  shops  in  the  smaller  towns 
are  minded  by  children,  whose  heads  some- 
times scarcely  come  above  the  counters. 

You  see  where  the  tall  shade  trees  along  the 
roads  and  the  small  trees  in  the  thickets  are 
being  shorn  away  in  order  that  the  furnaces  and 
the  hearthstones  may  not  be  altogether  fireless, 
since  the  enemy  holds  most  of  the  coal  mines. 
I  have  come  in  one  of  the  fine  state  forests 
upon  a  squad  of  American  lumberjacks,  big 
huskies  from  the  logging  camps  of  Northern 
Michigan,  with  their  portable  planing  mill 
whining  and  their  axes  flashing,  making  the 
sawdust  and  the  chips  fly,  in  what  once  not 
long  ago  was  a  grove  of  splendid  timber,  where 
beeches  and  chestnuts,  hundreds  of  years  old, 
stood  in  close  ranks;  but  which  now  is  being 

[  205  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

turned  into  a  wilderness  of  raw  stumps  and 
trodden  earth  and  stacks  of  ugly  plankings 

You  see  an  old  woman,  as  fleshless  as  a 
fagot,  helping  a  dog  to  drag  a  heavy  cart  up  a 
rocky  street,  the  two  of  them  together  strain- 
ing and  panting  against  the  leather  breast 
yokes.  For  every  kilometre  that  the  foe  ad- 
vances you  see  the  refugees  fleeing  from  their 
desolated  steadings;  indeed,  you  may  very 
accurately  gauge  the  rate  of  his  progress  by 
their  number. 

In  one  lonely  little  town  in  a  territory  as  yet 
undefiled  by  actual  hostilities  I  went  one  morn- 
ing not  long  ago  into  a  quaint  thirteenth-cen- 
tury church.  It  was  one  of  three  churches  in 
the  place;  and  in  point  of  membership,  I  think, 
the  smallest  of  the  three.  But  in  the  nave, 
upon  a  stone  pillar,  gnawed  by  time  with  fur- 
rows and  runnels,  I  found  a  little  framed  placard 
containing  the  names,  written  in  fine  script,  of 
those  communicants  who  had  died  in  service 
for  their  country  in  this  war.  The  list  plainly 
was  incomplete.  It  included  only  those  who 
had  fallen  up  to  the  beginning  of  last  year;  the 
toll  for  1917  and  for  1918  was  yet  to  be  added; 
and  yet  of  the  names  of  the  dead  out  of  this  one 
small  obscure  interior  parish  there  were  an 
even  one  hundred.  I  dare  say  the  poll  of  the 
whole  commune  would  have  shown  at  least 
three  times  as  many.  France  has  shown  the 
world  how  to  fight.  Now  it  shows  the  world 
how  to  die. 

[206] 


BEING    BOMBED    AND    RE- BOMBED 

But  of  ail  the  tragedies  that  multiply  them- 
selves so  abundantly  here  in  this  bloodied  land 
it  sometimes  seems  to  me  there  is  none  greater 
than  the  look  of  things  that  is  implanted  upon 
an  unfortified  town  that  has  been  subjected  to 
frequent  bombings.  It  is  not  so  much  the  shat- 
tered, ragged  ruins  where  bombs  have  scored 
direct  downward  hits  that  drive  home  the  lesson 
of  what  this  mode  of  reprisal,  this  type  of  pun- 
ishment means;  rather  it  is  the  echoing  empty 
street,  as  yet  undamaged,  w^hence  the  dwellers 
all  have  fled — long  stretches  of  streets,  with  the 
windows  shuttered  up  and  the  shops  locked  and 
barred  and  the  rank  grass  sprouting  between  the 
cobblestones,  and  the  starveling  tabby  cats 
foraging  like  the  gaunt  ghosts  of  cats  among 
forgotten  ash  barrels.  And  rather  more  than 
this  it  is  the  expression  of  those  who  through 
necessitv  or  choice  have  staved  on. 

I  am  thinking  particularly  of  Nancy — Nancy 
which  for  environment,  setting  and  architecture 
is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  little  cities  in  the 
world;  a  city  whose  ancient  walls  and  massy 
gateways  still  stand;  whose  squares  and  parks 
were  famous;  and  whose  people  once  led  pros- 
perous, contented  and  peaceful  lives.  Its 
Place  Stanislaus,  on  a  miniature  scale,  is,  I 
think,  as  lovely  as  any  plaza  in  Europe.  Since 
it  is  so  lovely  one  is  moved  to  wonder  why  the 
Germans  have  so  far  spared  it  from  the  ruina- 
tion they  shower  down  without  abatement 
upon  the  devoted  city.    It  is  well-nigh  deserted 

[207] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

now,  along  with  all  the  other  parts  of  the  town. 
Those  who  could  conveniently  get  away  have 
gone;  the  state  in  the  early  part  of  this  year 
transported  thousands  of  women  and  children 
on  special  trains  to  safer  territory  in  the  south 
of  France.  Those  who  remain  have  in  their  eyes 
the  haunting  terror  of  a  persistent  and  an  un- 
ceasing fearsomeness. 

To  be  in  Nancy  these  times  is  to  be  in  a 
stilled,  half-deserted  place  of  flinching  and  of 
danger,  and  of  the  death  that  comes  by  night, 
borne  on  whirring  motors.  I  walked  through 
its  streets  on  a  day  following  one  of  the  fre- 
quent air  raids  and  I  had  a  conception  of  how 
these  Old-World  cities  must  have  looked  in  the 
time  of  the  plague.  The  citizens  I  passed  were 
like  people  who  dwelt  beneath  the  shadow  of 
an  abiding  pestilence,  as  indeed  they  did. 

To  them  a  clear  still  night  with  the  placid 
stars  showing  in  the  heavens  meant  a  terrible 
threat.  It  meant  that  they  would  lie  quaking 
in  their  houses  for  the  signal  that  would  send 
them  to  the  cellars  and  the  dugouts,  while  high 
explosives  and  gas  bombs  and  inflammable 
bombs  came  raining  down.  They  knew  full 
well  what  it  meant  to  stay  above  ground  during 
the  dread  passover  of  the  Huns'  planes,  when 
hospitals  had  been  turned  into  shambles  and 
supply  depots  into  craters  of  raging  fire.  Yet 
there  remained  traces  of  the  racial  tempera- 
ment that  has  upbuoyed  the  French  and  helped 
them  to  endure  what  was  unendurable. 

[208] 


BEING    BOMBED    AND    RE-BOMBED 

A  little  waitress  in  a  cafe  said  to  three  of  us, 
with  a  smile:  "Ah,  but  you  should  be  in  Nancy 
on  a  rainy  night,  for  then  the  sound  of  snoring 
fills  the  place.  We  can  sleep  then — and  how 
we  do  sleep!" 

In  Nancy  they  pray  before  the  high  altars 
for  bad  weather  and  yet  more  bad  weather. 
And  so  do  they  in  many  another  town  in 
France  that  is  within  easy  striking  distance  of 
the  enemy's  batteries  and  airdromes. 


1 209  T 


CHAPTER  XIII 
LONDON  UNDER  RAID-PUNISHMENT 

OF  all  city  dwellers  I  am  sure  the  Lon- 
doner is  the  most  orderly  and  the  most 
capable  of  self-government,  as  he  like- 
wise is  the  most  phlegmatic.  Because 
of  these  common  traits  among  the  masses  of  the 
populace  an  air  raid  over  London,  considering 
its  potential  possibilities  for  destruction,  is 
comparatively  an  unexciting  episode  every- 
where in  the  metropolis,  save  and  except  only 
in  those  districts  of  the  East  End  where  the 
bulk  of  the  foreign-born  live.  There,  on  the 
first  wail  of  the  shrieking  sirens,  before  the 
warning  "maroon"  bombs  go  up  or  the  barrage 
fire  starts  from  protecting  batteries  in  the  sub- 
urbs and  along  the  Thames,  these  frightened 
aliens,  carrying  their  wives  and  children,  flock 
pell-mell  into  the  stations  of  the  Underground. 
They  spread  out  bedclothes  on  the  platforms 
and  camp  in  the  Tube,  which  is  the  English 
name  for  what  Americans  call  a  subway,  and 
sometimes  refuse  to  budge  until  long  after  the 
danger  has  passed.    At  the  height  of  the  bom- 

[210] 


LONDON    UNDER    RAID-PUNISHMENT 

bardment  they  pray  and  shriek,  and  the  women 
often  beat  their  breasts  and  tear  at  their  hair 
in  a  very  frenzy. 

But  this  is  true  only  of  the  emotional  Rus- 
sians and  Rumanians.  The  native  Londoners 
proceed  in  the  most  leisurely  fashion  to  the 
subterranean  shelters.  Indeed,  the  chief  task 
of  the  police  is  to  keep  them  from  exposing 
themselves  in  the  open,  in  efforts  to  get  a  sight 
of  the  enemy.  People  who  live  on  the  lower 
floors  of  stoutly  built  houses  mainly  bide  where 
they  are,  their  argument — and  a  very  sane  one 
it  is — being  that  since  the  chances  of  a  man's 
being  killed  in  his  home  at  such  a  time  are  no 
greater  than  of  his  roof  being  pierced  by  light- 
ning during  a  thunderstorm  he  is  almost  as 
safe  and  very  much  more  comfortable  staying 
in  his  bed  than  he  would  be  squatting  for  hours 
in  a  damp  cellar. 

No  matter  how  intense  the  bombardment 
the  busses  keep  on  running,  though  they  have 
few  enough  passengers.  From  one's  window 
one  may  see  the  big  double-deckers  lumbering 
by  like  frightened  elephants,  empty  of  all  but 
the  drivers  and  the  plucky  women  conductors, 
who  invariably  stick  to  their  posts  and  carry  on. 
The  London  bobby  promenades  at  his  usual 
deliberate  pace  no  matter  how  thick  the  shrapnel 
from  the  defender  guns  may  splash  down  about 
him  in  the  darkened  street;  and  the  night 
postman  calmly  goes  his  rounds  too. 

One  night  in  London  after  the  alarm  had 

[211] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

been  sounded  I  invaded  the  series  of  walled 
caverns  and  wine  vaults  known  as  the  Adelphi 
Arches,  which  are  just  off  the  Strand,  near 
Charing  Cross.  Several  hundred  men,  women 
and  children  had  already  taken  refuge  there. 
Near  one  of  the  entrances  a  young  mother  was 
singing  her  baby  to  sleep;  a  little  farther  on  a 
group  of  Australian  soldiers  were  trying,  rather 
unsuccessfully,  to  open  beer  bottles  with  their 
finger  nails;  and  at  the  mouth  of  a  side  base- 
ment opening  off  a  layer  cave  half  a  dozen 
typical  Londoner  civilians,  of  the  sort  who  wear 
flat  caps  instead  of  hats  and  woollen  necker- 
chiefs instead  of  collars,  were  warmly  dis- 
cussing politics  in  high  nasal  notes.  Nowhere 
was  there  evident  any  concern  or  distress,  or 
even  any  considerable  amount  of  irritation  at 
our  enforced  inconvenience. 

Still,  any  man  who  figures  that  the  English- 
man is  not  stimulated  to  stouter  resistance  by 
these  visitations  from  the  German  would  be 
mistaken.  Beneath  the  surface  of  his  apparent 
indifference  there  is  produced  at  each  recur- 
rent attack  an  enhanced  current  of  hate  for 
the  government  that  first  inaugurated  this 
system  of  barbaric  warfare  against  unfortified 
communities.  There  is  something  so  radically 
wrong  in  the  Prussian  propaganda  it  is  in- 
conceivable that  any  mind  save  a  Prussian's 
mind  could  have  conceived  it.  His  imagination 
is  on  backward  and  he  thinks  hind  part  before. 
In  the  folly  of  his  besetting  madness  he  figures 

[  212  ] 


LONDON    UNDER    RAID-PUNISHMENT 

that  he  can  subjugate  a  man  by  mangling  that 
man's  wife  and  baby  to  bits — the  one  thing 
that  has  always  been  potent  to  make  a  valiant 
fighter  out  of  the  veriest  coward  that  lives. 

They  may  not  waste  their  rage  in  vain  and 
vulgar  mou things — that  would  be  the  German, 
not  the  English  way — but  one  may  be  sure  that 
the  people  of  London  will  never  forgive  the 
Kaiser  for  the  hideous  things  his  agents,  in 
accordance  with  his  policy  of  f rightfulness, 
have  wrought  among  innocent  noncombatants 
in  their  city  and  in  their  island.  They  are 
entering  up  the  balance  in  the  ledgers  of  their 
righteous  indignauon  against  the  day  of  final 
reckoning. 

After  I  had  seen  personally  some  of  the 
results  of  one  of  the  nocturnal  onslaughts  I 
too  could  share  in  the  feelings  of  those  more 
directly  affected,  for  I  could  realise  that,  given 
an  opportunity  now  denied  him  by  the  mercy 
of  distance  and  much  intervening  salt  water, 
the  Hun  would  be  doing  unto  American  cities 
what  he  had  done  to  this  English  city;  and  I 
could  picture  the  same  unspeakable  atrocities 
perpetrated  upon  New  Haven  or  Asbury  Park 
or  Charleston  a^  have  been  perpetrated  upon 
London  and  Dover  and  Margate. 

There  was  an  old  clergyman  of  the  Estab- 
lished Church  who  lived  in  a  rectorv  not  far 
from  Covent  Garden,  a  man  near  seventy, 
who  probably  had  never  wittingly  done  an 
evil  thing  or  a  cruel  thing  in  all  his  correct 

[213  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 


and  godly  life.  He  came  to  have  the  name  of 
the  Raid  Preacher,  because  at  every  aerial 
attack  he  went  forth  fearlessly  from  his  home, 
making  the  tour  of  all  the  shelters  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. At  each  place  he  would  cheer  and 
quiet  the  crowds  there  assembled,  telling  them 
there  was  no  real  danger,  reading  to  them 
comforting  passages  of  the  Scriptures  and  en- 
couraging them  to  sing  homely  and  familiar 
songs.  He  had  been  doing  this  from  the  time 
when  the  Zeppelins  first  invaded  the  London 
district.  He  had  held  funeral  services  over 
the  bodies  of  hundreds  of  raid  victims,  so  they 
told  me.  Regardless  of  the  religious  affilia- 
tions of  the  dead,  or  the  lack  of  church  ties, 
their  families  almost  invariably  asked  him  to 
conduct  the  burials. 

One  night  in  the  present  year — I  am  for- 
bidden to  give  the  exact  date  or  the  exact 
place,  though  neither  of  them  matters  now — 
the  raiders  came.  The  old  clergyman  hurried 
to  a  cellar  under  a  near-by  business  establish- 
ment, where  a  swarm  of  tenement  dwellers  of 
the  quarter  had  congregated  for  safety.  He 
was  standing  in  their  midst  in  the  darkened 
place,  bidding  them  to  be  of  good  and  tranquil 
faith,  when  a  two-hundred  pound  bomb  of 
high  explosives,  sped  from  a  Gotha  eight 
thousand  feet  above  and  aimed  by  chance, 
came  through  the  building,  bringing  the  roof 
and  the  upper  floors  with  it. 

A  great  many  persons  were  killed  or  wounded. 

[214] 


LONDON    UNDER    RAID-PUNISHMENT 

When  the  rescuers  came  almost  the  first  body 
they  brought  out  of  the  burning  ruins  was 
that  of  the  Raid  Preacher.  They  had  found 
him,  with  torn  flesh  and  broken  bones,  but 
with  his  face  unmarred,  lying  on  the  floor. 
His  thumbed  leather  Bible  was  under  him, 
open  at  a  certain  page,  and  there  was  blood 
upon  its  leaves. 

Men  who  saw  his  funeral  cortege  told  me  of 
it  with  tears  in  their  eyes.  They  said  that 
people  of  all  faiths  walked  in  the  rain  behind 
the  hearse,  and  that  the  biggest  of  all  the 
funeral  wreaths  was  a  gift  from  a  little  colony 
of  poor  Jewish  folk  in  the  district,  and  that 
one  whole  section  of  the  sorrowful  procession 
was  made  up  of  cripples  and  convalescents — 
pale,  lame,  halt  men  and  women  and  children 
who  limped  on  crutches  or  marched  with 
bandaged  heads  or  with  twisted  trunks;  and 
these  were  the  injured  survivors  of  previous 
raids,  to  whom  the  dead  man  had  ministered 
in  their  time  of  suffering. 

In  a  hospital  I  saw  a  little  girl  who  had  been 
most  terribly  maimed  by  the  same  missile 
that  killed  the  old  rector.  I  am  not  going  to 
dwell  on  the  state  of  this  child.  When  I 
think  of  her  I  have  not  the  words  to  express 
the  feelings  that  I  have.  But  one  of  her  hands 
was  gone  at  the  wrist,  and  the  other  hand  was 
badly  shattered;  so  she  was  just  a  wan  little 
brutally  abbreviated  fragment  of  humanity, 
a    living    fraction,    most    grievously    afflicted. 

[215] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

Her  wounds  had  ceased  to  pain  her,  the  head 
nurse  told  me  before  we  entered,  and  for  the 
rest  of  the  time  she  was  a  good  patient,  one 
of  the  best  in  the  ward. 

She  was  lying,  when  I  saw  her,  with  her  head 
propped  upon  a  pillow  that  was  no  whiter  than 
her  face  was,  and  there  was  the  pitiable  wraith 
of  a  smile  on  her  poor  little  pinched  common- 
place face,  and  to  her  breast,  with  the  bandaged 
stump  of  one  arm  and  with  her  remaining  hand 
that  was  swarthed  in  a  clump  of  wrapping,  she 
cuddled  up  a  painted  china  doll  which  some- 
body had  brought  her;  and  she  was  singing 
to  it.  The  sight,  I  take  it,  would  have  been 
very  gracious  in  the  eyes  of  His  Imperial 
Majesty  of  Prussia — except,  of  course,  that 
the  little  girl  still  lived;  that  naturally  would 
be  a  drawback  to  his  complete  enjoyment  of 
the  spectacle. 


[216] 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  DAY  OF  BIG  BERTHA 

THERE  was  mingled  comedy  and  woe  in 
the  scenes  at  Paris  on  the  memorable 
day  when  the  great  long-distance  gun — 
which  the  Parisians  promptly  christened 
"Big  Bertha"  in  tribute  to  the  titular  mistress 
of  the  Krupp  works  where  it  was  produced — 
first  opened  upon  the  city  from  seventy-odd 
miles  away  and  thereby  established,  among 
other  records,  a  precedent  for  distance  and 
scope  in  artillery  bombardments.  Paris  was 
in  a  fit  mood  for  emotion.  The  people  were  on 
edge;  their  nerves  tensed,  for  there  had  been 
an  alarm  the  evening  before.  The  raiding 
planes  had  been  turned  back  at  the  suburbs 
and  driven  off  by  the  barrage  fire,  but  the 
populace  mainly  had  flocked  into  the  ahris 
and  the  underground  stations  of  the  Metro- 
politain. 

At  ten  o'clock  that  night,  after  the  danger 
was  over,  a  funny  thing  occurred:  The  crew 
of  a  motor-drawn  fire  engine  had  fuddled  them- 
selves with  wine,  and  for  upward  of  half  an 

[217] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

hour  the  driver  drove  his  red  wagon  at  top 
speed  up  and  down  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  past  the 
Tuileries  Gardens.  With  him  he  had  four  of 
his  confreres  in  blue  uniforms  and  brass  helmets. 
These  rode  two  on  a  side  behind  him,  their 
helmets  shining  in  the  bright  moonlight  like 
pots  of  gold  turned  upside  down;  and  as  they 
rode  the  two  on  one  side  sounded  the  alerte 
signal  on  sirens,  and  the  two  on  the  other  side 
sounded  the  "all  clear"  on  bugles;  and  between 
blasts  all  four  rocked  in  their  places  with  joy 
over  their  little  joke. 

In  London  the  thing  would  have  constituted 
a  public  scandal;  in  New  York  there  would 
have  been  a  newspaper  hullabaloo  over  it.  It 
was  typical  of  Paris,  I  think,  that  the  street 
crowds  became  infected  with  the  spirit  which 
filled  the  roistering  firemen  and  cheered  them 
as  they  went  merrily  racketing  back  and  forth. 
Nor,  so  far  as  I  could  ascertain,  were  the  fire- 
men disciplined;  at  least  there  was  no  mention 
in  print  of  the  incident,  though  a  great  many 
persons,  the  writer  included,  witnessed  it. 

At  seven  o'clock  the  following  morning  I  was 
standing  at  the  window  of  my  bedchamber 
when  something  of  a  very  violent  and  a  highly 
startling  nature  went  off  just  beyond  the  line 
of  housetops  and  tree  tops  which  hedged  my 
horizon  view  to  the  northward.  Another 
booming  detonation,  and  yet  another,  followed 
in  close  succession.  I  figured  to  my  own  satis- 
faction that  one  of  the  enemy  planes  which 

[218] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


were  chased  away  the  night  before  had  taken 
advantage  of  the  cloaking  mists  of  the  new  day 
to  sHp  back  and  pay  his  outrageous  comphments 
to  an  unsuspecting  municipahty.     Anyhow  a 
fellow  becomes  accustomed  to  the  sounds  of 
loud  noises  in  wartimes,  and  after  a  while  ceases 
to  concern  himself  greatly  about  their  causes 
or  even  their  effects  unless  the  disturbances 
transpire  in  his  immediate  proximity.     Life  m 
wartime  in  a  country  where  the  war  is  consists 
largely  in  getting  used  to  things  that  are  ab- 
normal and  unusual.     One  takes  as  a  matter 
of    course    occurrences    that    in    peace    would 
throw  his  entire  scheme  of  existence   out   ot 
gear.    He  is  living,  so  to  speak,  m  a  world  that 
is  turned  upside  down,  amid  a  jumble  of  acute 
and  violent  contradictions,  both  physical  and 

metaphysical.  . 

With  two  companions  I  set  out  for  a  certain 
large  hotel  which  had  the  reputation  of  being 
able  to  produce  genuine  North  American  break- 
fasts for  North  American  appetites.  In  the 
main  grillroom  we  had  just  finished  compiling 
an  order,  which  included  fried  whitmg,  ham 
and  eggs,  country  style,  and  fried  potatoes, 
when  a  fire-department  truck  went  shrieking 
through  the  street  outside,  its  whistle  blasting 
away  as  though  it  had  a  scared  banshee  locked 
up  in  its  brazen  throat. 

There  were  not  many  persons  in  the  room- 
to  your  average  Frenchman  his  dinner  is  a 
holy  rite,  but  his  breakfast  is  a  trifling  mci- 

[219] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

dent — but  most  of  these  persons  rose  from  their 
tables  and  straightway  departed.  The  woman 
cashier  hurried  off  with  her  hat  on  sidewise, 
which  among  women  the  world  over  is  a  thing 
betokening  agitation. 

The  head  waiter  approached  us  with  our  bill 
in  his  tremulous  hand,  and  bowing,  wished  to 
know  whether  messieurs  would  be  so  good  as 
to  settle  the  account  now.  Bv  his  manner  he 
sought  to  indicate  that  such  M^as  the  custom 
of  the  house.  We  told  him  firmly  that  we 
would  pay  after  we  had  eaten  and  not  a  minute 
sooner.  He  gave  a  despairing  gesture  and  van- 
ished, leaving  the  slip  upon  the  tablecloth. 
Somebody  hastily  deposited  within  our  reach 
the  food  we  had  ordered  and  withdrew. 

Before  we  were  half  through  eating  a  very 
short,  very  frightened-looking  boy  in  buttons 
appeared  at  our  elbows,  pleading  to  know 
whether  we  were  ready  for  our  hats  and  canes. 
Since  he  appeared  to  be  in  some  haste  about 
it  and  since  he  was  so  small  a  small  bov  and  so 
uneasy,  we  told  him  to  bring  them  along.  He 
did  bring  them  along,  practically^  instantane- 
ously, in  fact,  and  promptly  was  begone  with- 
out waiting  for  a  tip — an  omission  which  up 
until  this  time  had  never  marred  the  traditional 
ethics  of  hat-check  boys  either  in  France  or 
anvwhere  else. 

Presently  it  dawned  upon  us  that  as  far  as 
appearances  went  we  were  entirely  alone  in 
the  heart  of  a  great  city.     So  when  we  were 

[  220  ] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


through  eating  we  left  the  amount  of  the 
breakfast  bill  upon  a  plate  and  ourselves  de- 
parted from  there.  The  lobby  of  the  hotel 
and  the  office  and  the  main  hallway  were  en- 
tirely deserted,  there  being  neither  guests  nor 
functionaries  in  sight.  But  through  a  grating 
in  the  floor  came  up  a  gush  of  hot  air,  licking 
our  legs  as  we  passed.  This  may  have  been 
the  flow  from  a  unit  of  the  heating  plant,  or 
then  again  it  may  have  been  the  hot  and  fever- 
ish breathing  of  the  habitues  of  that  hotel, 
'scaping  upward  through  a  vent  in  the  sub- 
cellar's  roof. 

Outside,  in  the  streets,  the  shopkeepers  had 
put  up  their  iron  shutters.  At  intervals  the 
plug-plug-blooie !  of  fresh  explosions  punctuated 
the  hooting  of  fire  engines  racing  with  the 
alarm  in  adjacent  quarters.  Overhead,  ranging 
and  quartering  the  upper  reaches  of  the  sky, 
like  pointer  dogs  in  a  sedge  field,  were  scores 
of  French  aeroplanes  searching,  and  searching 
vainly,  for  the  unseen  foeman. 

The  thing  was  uncanny;  it  was  daunting  and 
smacked  of  witchcraft.  Here  were  the  pro- 
jectiles dropping  down,  apparently  from  di- 
rectly above,  and  they  were  bursting  in  various 
sections,  to  the  accompaniments  of  clattering 
debris  and  shattering  glass;  and  yet  there  was 
neither  sight  nor  sound  of  the  agencies  respon- 
sible for  the  attack.  All  sorts  of  rumours 
spread,  each  to  find  hundreds  of  earnest  advo- 
cates and  as  many  more  vociferous  purveyors. 

[221] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

One  theory,  often  advanced  and  generally 
retailed,  was  that  the  Germans  had  produced 
a  new  type  of  aeroplane,  with  a  noiseless  motor, 
and  capable  of  soaring  at  a  height  where  it  was 
invisible  to  the  naked  eye.  Another  possible 
solution  for  the  enigma  was  that  with  the  aid  of 
spies  and  traitors  the  Germans  had  set  up  a 
gun  fired  by  air  compression  upon  a  housetop 
in  the  environs  and  were  bombarding  the  city 
from  beneath  the  protection  of  a  false  roof.  In 
the  doorway  of  every  abri  the  credulous  and 
the  incredulous  held  heated  arguments,  dodging 
back  under  shelter,  like  prairie  dogs  into  their 
holes,  at  each  recurring  crash. 

Presently  it  dawned  upon  the  hearkening 
groups  that  the  missiles  were  falling  at  stated 
and  ordained  periods.  Twenty  minutes  regu- 
larly intervened  between  smashes.  Apprecia- 
tion of  this  circumstance  injected  a  new  ele- 
ment of  surmise  into  a  terrific  and  most  pro- 
foundly puzzling  affair.  This  was  a  mystery 
that  grew  momentarily  more  mysterious. 

Business  for  the  time  being  was  pretty  much 
suspended;  anyhow  nearly  everybody  appeared 
to  be  taking  part  in  the  debates.  However, 
the  taxicabs  were  still  plying.  A  Parisian  cabby 
mav  be  trusted  to  take  a  chance  on  his  life 
if  there  is  a  fare  in  sight  and  the  prospect  of  a 
pourboire  to  follow.  Two  of  us  engaged  a 
weather-beaten  individual  who  apparently  had 
no  interest  in  the  controversies  raging  about 
him  or  in  the  shelling  either;  and  in  his  rig  we 

[  222  ] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


drove  to  the  scene  of  the  first  explosion,  arriv- 
ing there  within  a  few  minutes  after  the  devihsh 
cyHnder  fell. 

There  had  been  loss  of  life  here — no  great 
amount  as  loss  of  life  is  measured  these  times 
in  this  country,  but  attended  by  conditions 
that  made  the  disaster  hideous  and  distressing. 
The  blood  of  victims  still  trickled  in  runlets 
between  the  paving  stones  where  we  walked, 
and  there  were  mangled  bodies  stretched  on 
the  floor  of  an  improvised  morgue  across  the 
way — mainly  bodies  of  poor  working  women, 
and  one,  I  heard,  the  body  of  a  widow  with 
half  a  dozen  children,  who  now  would  be  doubly 
orphaned,  since  their  father  was  dead  at  the 
Front. 

Back  again  at  my  hotel  after  a  forenoon 
packed  with  curious  experiences,  I  found  in 
my  quarters  a  very  badly  scared  chambermaid, 
trying  to  tidy  a  room  with  fingers  that  shook. 
In  my  best  French,  which  I  may  state  is  the 
worst  possible  French,  I  was  trying  to  explain 
to  her  that  the  bombardment  had  probably 
ended — and  for  a  fact  there  had  been  a  forty- 
minute  lull  in  the  new  frightfulness — when  one 
of  the  shells  struck  and  went  off  among  the 
trees  and  flowerbeds  of  a  public  breathing  place 
not  a  hundred  and  fifty  yards  away.  With  a 
shriek  the  maid  fell  on  her  knees  and  buried 
her  head,  ostrich  fashion,  in  a  nest  of  sofa 
pillows. 

I  stepped  through  my  bedroom  window  upon 

[223] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

a  little  balconj^  in  time  to  see  the  dust  cloud 
rise  in  a  column  and  to  follow  with  my  eyes 
the  frenzied  whirlings  of  a  great  flock  of  wood 
pigeons  flighting  high  into  the  air  from  their 
roosting  perches  in  the  park  plot.  The  next 
instant  I  felt  a  violent  tugging  at  the  back 
breadth  of  the  leather  harness  that  I  wore. 
Unwittingly,  in  her  panic  the  maid  had  struck 
upon  the  only  possible  use  to  which  a  Sam 
Browne  belt  may  be  put — other  than  the  orna- 
mental, and  that  is  a  moot  point  among  fanciers 
of  the  purely  decorative  in  the  matter  of  mili- 
tary gearing  for  the  human  form.  By  accident 
she  had  divined  its  one  utilitarian  purpose. 
She  had  risen  and  with  both  hands  had  laid 
hold  upon  the  crosspiece  of  my  main  surcingle 
and  was  striving  to  drag  me  inside.  I  rather 
gathered  from  the  tenor  of  her  contemporaneous 
remarks,  w^hich  she  uttered  at  the  top  of  her 
voice  and  into  which  she  interjected  the  names 
of  several  saints,  that  she  feared  the  sight  of 
me  in  plain  view  on  that  stone  ledge  might 
incite  the  invisible  marauder  to  added  excesses. 
But  I  was  the  larger  and  stronger  of  the  two, 
and  my  buckles  held,  and  I  had  the  advantage 
of  an  iron  railing  to  cling  to.  After  a  short 
struggle  my  would-be  rescuer  lost.  She  turned 
loose  of  my  kicking  straps  and  breech  bands, 
and  making  hurried  reference  to  various  names 
in  the  calendar  of  the  canonised  she  fled  from 
my  presence.  I  heard  her  falling  down  the  stairs 
to  the  floor  below.    The  next  day  I  had  a  new 

[224] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


chambermaid;  this  one  had  tendered  her  res- 
ignation. 

Not  until  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  was 
the  proper  explanation  for  the  phenomenon 
forthcoming.  It  came  then  from  the  Min- 
istry of  War,  in  the  bald  and  unembroidered 
laconics  of  a  formal  communique.  At  the  first 
time  of  hearing  it  the  announcement  seemed 
so  inconceivable,  so  manifestly  impossible  that 
official  sanction  was  needed  to  make  men  believe 
Teuton  ingenuity  had  found  a  way  to  upset 
all  the  previously  accepted  principles  touching 
on  gravity  and  friction;  on  arcs  and  orbits; 
on  aims  and  directions;  on  projectiles  and 
projectives;  on  the  resisting  tensility  of  steel 
bores  and  on  the  carrying  power  of  gun  charges 
— by  producing  a  cannon  with  a  ranging  scope 
of  somewhere  between  sixty  and  ninety  miles. 

Days  of  bombardment  followed — days  which 
culminated  on  that  never-to-be-forgotten  Good 
Friday  when  malignant  chance  sped  a  shell 
to  wreck  one  of  the  oldest  churches  in  Paris 
and  to  kill  seventy-five  and  wound  ninety 
worshippers  gathered  beneath  its  roof. 

After  the  first  flurry  of  uncertainty  the 
populace  for  the  most  part  grew  tranquil; 
now  that  they  knew  the  origin  of  the  far-flung 
punishment  there  was  measurably  less  dread 
of  the  consequences  among  the  masses  of  the 
people.  On  days  when  the  shells  exploded 
futilely  the  daily  press  and  the  comedians  in 
the  music  halls  made  jokes  at  the  expense  of 

[225] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

Big  Bertha;  as,  for  example,  on  a  day  when  a 
fragment  of  shell  took  the  razor  out  of  the  hand 
of  a  man  who  was  shaving  himself,  without 
doing  him  the  slightest  injury;  and  again 
when  a  whole  shell  wrecked  a  butcher  shop 
and  strewed  the  neighbourhood  with  kidneys 
and  livers  and  rib  ends  of  beef,  but  spared  the 
butcher  and  his  family.  On  days  when  the 
colossal  piece  scored  a  murderous  coup  for 
its  masters  and  took  innocent  life,  the  papers 
printed  the  true  death  lists  without  attempt 
at  concealment  of  the  ravages  of  the  monster. 
And  on  all  the  bombardment  days,  women 
went  shopping  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix;  children 
played  in  the  parks;  the  flower  women  of  the 
Madeleine  sold  their  wares  to  customers  with 
the  reverberations  of  the  explosions  booming 
in  their  ears ;  the  crowds  that  sat  sipping  coloured 
drinks  at  small  tables  in  front  of  the  boulevard 
cafes  on  fair  afternoons  were  almost  as  numerous 
as  they  had  been  before  the  persistent  thing 
started;  and  unless  the  sound  was  very  loud 
indeed  the  average  promenader  barely  lifted 
his  or  her  head  at  each  recurring  report.  In 
America  we  look  upon  the  French  as  an  excit- 
able race,  but  here  they  offered  to  the  world  a 
pattern  for  the  practice  of  fortitude. 

A  good  many  people  departed  from  Paris 
to  the  southward.  However,  there  was  calm- 
ness under  constant  danger.  Our  owti  people, 
who  were  in  Paris  in  numbers  mounting  up 
into  the  thousands,  likewise  set  a  fine  example 

[226] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


of  sang-froid.  On  the  evening  of  the  opening 
day  of  the  bombarding,  when  any  one  might 
have  been  pardoned  for  being  a  bit  jumpy,  an 
audience  of  enlisted  men  which  packed  the 
American  Soldiers  and  Sailors'  Club  in  the 
Rue  Roy  ale  was  gathered  to  hear  a  jazz  band 
play  Yankee  tunes  and  afterward  to  hear  an 
amateur  speaker  make  an  address.  The  can- 
non had  suspended  its  annoying  performances 
with  the  going  down  of  the  sun,  but  just  as  the 
speaker  stood  up  by  the  piano  the  alerte  for 
an  air  attack — which,  by  the  way,  proved  to 
be  a  false  alarm,  after  all — was  heard  outside. 

There  was  a  little  pause,  and  a  rustling  of 
bodies. 

Then  the  man,  who  was  on  his  feet,  spoke 
up.  "I'll  stay  as  long  as  any  one  else  does," 
he  said.  "Anyhow,  I  don't  know  which  is 
likely  to  be  the  worse  of  two  evils — my  poor 
attempts  at  entertaining  you  inside  or  the 
boche's  threatened  performances  outside." 

A  great  yell  of  approval  went  up  and  not 
a  single  person  left  the  building  until  after 
the  chairman  announced  that  the  programme 
for  the  evening  had  reached  its  conclusion.  I 
know  this  to  be  a  fact  because  I  was  among 
those  present. 

To  be  sure,  the  strain  of  the  harassment 
got  upon  the  nerves  of  some;  that  would  be 
inevitable,  human  nature  being  what  it  is. 
Attendance  at  the  theatres,  especially  for  the 
matinees,    fell    off    appreciably;    this,    though, 

[  227] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

being  attributable,  I  think,  more  to  fear  of 
panic  inside  the  buildings  than  to  fear  of  what 
the  missiles  might  do  to  the  buildings  them- 
selves. And  there  was  no  record  of  any  in- 
dividual, whether  man  or  woman,  quitting  a 
post  of  responsibility  because  of  the  personal 
peril  to  which  all  alike  were  exposed. 

Likewise  on  those  days  when  the  great  gun 
functioned  promptly  at  twenty-minute  inter- 
vals one  would  see  men  sitting  in  drinking 
places  with  their  eyes  glued  to  the  faces  of  their 
wrist  watches  while  they  waited  for  the  next 
crash.  For  those  whose  nerves  lay  close  to 
their  skins  this  damnable  regularity  of  it  was 
the  worst  phase  of  the  thing. 

There  was  something  so  characteristically  and 
atrociously  German,  something  so  hellishly 
methodical  in  the  tormenting  certainty  that 
each  hour  would  be  divided  into  three  equal 
parts  by  three  descending  steel  tubes  of  potential 
destruction. 

Big  Bertha  operated  on  a  perfect  schedule. 
She  opened  up  daily  at  seven  a.  m.  sharp;  she 
quit  at  six-twenty  p.  M.  It  was  as  though  the 
crew  that  tended  her  carried  union  cards. 
They  were  never  tardy.  Neither  did  they  work 
overtime.  But  if  the  Prussians  counted  upon 
bedeviling  the  people  into  panic  and  distracting 
the  industrial  and  social  economies  of  Paris 
they  missed  their  guess.  They  made  some 
people  desperately  unhappy,  no  doubt,  and 
they  frightened  some;  but  the  true  organism 

[  228  ] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


of  the  community  remained  serene  and  un- 
impaired. 

Some  share  of  this,  I  figure  might  be  attrib- 
uted to  the  facts  that  in  a  city  as  great  as 
Paris  the  chances  of  any  one  individual  being 
killed  were  so  greatly  reduced  that  the  very 
size  of  the  town  served  to  envelop  its  inhabi- 
tants with  a  sense  of  comparative  immunity; 
the  number  of  buildings,  and  their  massiveness 
inspired  a  feeling  of  partial  security.  I  know  I 
felt  safer  than  I  have  felt  out  in  the  open  when 
the  enemy's  playful  batteries  were  searching 
out  the  terrain  round  about.  In  a  smaller  city 
this  condition  probably  would  not  have  been 
manifest  to  the  same  degree.  There  almost 
everybody  would  be  likely  to  know  personally 
the  latest  victim  or  to  be  familiar  with  the 
latest  scene  of  damage  and  this  would  serve 
doubtlessly  to  bring  the  apprehensive  home  to 
all  households.  Howsoever,  be  the  underlying 
cause  what  it  might,  Paris  weathered  the 
brunt  of  the  ordeal  with  splendid  fortitude  and 
an  admirable  coolness. 

Being  frequently  in  Paris  between  visits  to 
one  or  another  sector  of  the  front,  I  was  able 
to  keep  a  fairly  accurate  score  in  the  ravages  of 
the  bombardment  and  to  get  a  fairly  average 
appraisal  of  the  effects  upon  the  Parisian 
temper.  Likewise  by  reading  translated  ex- 
tracts out  of  German  newspapers  I  got  impres- 
sions of  another  phase  of  the  tragedy  which 
almost  was  as  vivid  as  though  I  had  been  an 

[229] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

eye  witness  to  events  which  I  knew  of  only  at 
second-hand  from  the  pubhshed  descriptions 
of  them. 

I  had  the  small  advantage  though  on  my  side 
of  being  able  to  vizualise  the  setting  in  the 
Forest  of  St.  Gobain,  to  the  west  of  Laon  for 
I  was  there  once  in  German  company.  I 
could  conjure  up  a  presentiment  of  the  scene 
there  enacted  on  the  day  when  Big  Bertha's 
makers  and  masters  sprang  their  well-guarded 
surprise,  which  so  carefully  and  so  secretly 
had  been  evolved  during  months  of  planning 
and  constructing  and  experimentations.  Behold 
then  the  vision:  It  is  a  fine  spring  morning. 
There  is  dew  on  the  grass  and  there  is  song 
in  the  throats  of  the  birds  and  young  foliage 
is  upon  the  trees.  The  great  grey  gun — it  is 
nearly  ninety  feet  long  and  according  to  in- 
spired Teutonic  chronicles  resembles  a  vast 
metal  crone — squats  its  misshapen  mass  upon 
a  prepared  concrete  base  in  the  edge  of  the 
woods,  just  on  the  timbered  shoulder  of  a  hill. 
Its  long  muzzle  protrudes  at  an  angle  from  the 
interlacing  boughs  of  the  thicket  where  it  hides ; 
at  a  very  steep  angle,  too,  since  the  charge  it 
will  fire  must  ascend  twenty  miles  into  the 
air  in  order  to  reach  its  objective.  Behind 
it  is  a  stenciling  of  white  birches  and  slender 
poplars  flung  up  against  the  sky  line;  in  front 
of  it  is  a  disused  meadow  where  the  newly 
minted  coinage  of  a  prodigal  springtime — 
dandelions  that  are  like  gold  coins  and  wild 

[  230  ] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


marguerites  that  are  like  silver  ones — spangle 
the  grass  as  though  the  profligate  season  had 
strewn  its  treasures  broadcast  there.  The  gun- 
ners make  ready  the  monster  for  its  dedication. 
They  open  its  great  navel  and  slide  into  its 
belly  a  steel  shell  nine  inches  thick  and  three 
feet  long  nearly  and  girthed  with  beltings  of 
spun  brass.     The  supreme  moment  is  at  hand. 

From  a  group  of  staff  officers  advances  a 
small  man,  grown  old  beyond  his  time;  this 
man  wears  the  field  uniform  of  a  Prussian 
field  marshal.  He  has  a  sword  at  his  side 
and  spurs  on  his  booted  feet  and  a  spiked  hel- 
met upon  his  head.  He  has  a  withered  arm 
which  dangles  abortively,  foreshortened  out 
of  its  proper  length.  His  hair  is  almost  snow- 
white  and  his  moustache  with  its  fiercely  up- 
turned and  tufted  ends  is  white.  From  between 
slitted  lids  imbedded  in  his  skull  behind  un- 
healthy dropical  pouches  of  flesh  his  brooding, 
morbid  eyes  show  as  two  blue  dots,  like  touches 
of  pale  light  glinting  on  twin  disks  of  shallow 
polished  agate.  He  bears  himself  with  a  mien 
that  either  is  imperial  or  imperious,  depending 
upon  one's  point  of  view. 

While  all  about  him  bow  almost  in  the  manner 
of  priests  making  obeisance  before  a  shrine, 
he  touches  with  one  sacred  finger  the  button 
of  an  electrical  controller.  The  air  is  blasted 
and  the  earth  rocks  then  to  the  loudest  crash 
that  ever  issued  from  the  mouth  of  a  gun; 
for  all  its  bulk  and  weight  the  cannon  recoils 

[  231  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

on  its  carriage  and  shakes  itself;  the  tree  tops 
quiver  in  a  palsy.  The  young  grass  is  flattened 
as  though  by  a  sudden  high  wind  blowing 
along  the  ground;  the  frightened  birds  flutter 
about  and  are  mute. 

The  bellowing  echoes  die  away  in  a  fainter 
and  yet  fainter  cadence.  The-Anointed-of- 
God  turns  up  his  good  wrist  to  consider  the 
face  of  the  watch  strapped  thereon;  his  staff 
follow  his  royal  example.  One  minute  passes 
in  a  sort  of  sacerdotal  silence.  There  is  drama 
in  the  pause;  a  fine  theatricalism  in  the  inter- 
lude. Two  minutes,  two  minutes  and  a  half 
pass.  This  is  one  part  of  the  picture;  there  is 
another  part  of  it: 

Seventy  miles  away  in  a  spot  where  a  busy 
street  opens  out  into  a  paved  plaza  all  manner 
of  common,  ordinary  work-a-day  persons  are 
busied  about  their  puny  affairs.  In  addition 
to  being  common  and  ordinary  these  folks  do 
not  believe  in  the  divine  right  of  kings;  truly 
a  high  crime  and  misdemeanour.  Moreover, 
they  persist  in  the  heretical  practice  of  repub- 
licanism; they  believe  actually  that  all  men 
were  born  free  and  equal;  that  all  men  have 
the  grace  and  the  authority  within  them  to 
choose  their  own  rulers;  that  all  men  have  the 
right  to  live  their  own  lives  free  from  foreign 
dictation  and  alien  despotism.  But  at  this 
particular  moment  they  are  not  concerned  in 
the  least  with  politics  or  policies.  Their  simple 
day    is    starting.     A    woman    in    a    sidewalk 

[232] 


THE    DAY    OF    BIG    BERTHA 


kiosk  is  ranging  morning  papers  on  her  narrow 
shelf.  A  half-grown  girl  in  a  small  booth  set 
in  the  middle  of  the  square  where  the  tracks 
of  the  tramway  end,  is  selling  street  car  tickets 
to  working  men  in  blouses  and  baggy  corduroy 
trousers.  Hucksters  and  barrow-men  have  es- 
tablished a  small  market  along  the  curbing  of 
the  pavement.  A  waiter  is  mopping  the  metal 
tops  of  a  row  of  little  round  tables  under  the 
glass  markee  of  a  cafe.  Wains  and  wagons 
are  passing  with  a  rumble  of  wheels.  Here 
there  is  no  drama  except  the  simple  homely 
drama  of  applied  industry. 

Three  minutes  pass:  Far  away  to  the  north, 
where  the  woods  are  quiet  again  and  the 
birds  have  mustered  up  courage  to  sing  once 
more,  The  Regal  One  drops  his  arm  and  looks 
about  him  at  his  officers,  nodding  and  smiling. 
Smiling,  they  nod  back  in  chorus,  like  well- 
trained  automatons.  There  is  a  murmur  of 
interchanged  congratulations.  The  effort  upon 
which  so  much  invaluable  time  and  so  much 
scientific  thought  have  been  expended,  stands 
unique  and  accomplished.  Unless  all  calcu- 
lations have  failed  the  nine-inch  shell  has 
reached  its  mark,  has  scored  its  bull's  eye,  has 
done  its  predestined  job. 

It  has;  those  calculations  could  not  go 
wrong.  Out  of  the  kindly  and  smiling  heavens, 
with  no  warning  except  the  shriek  of  its  clear- 
ing passage  through  the  skies,  the  bolt  descends 
in  the  busy  square.    The  glass  awning  over  the 

[  233  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

cafe  front  becomes  a  darting  rain  of  sharp-edged 
javelins;  the  paving  stones  rise  and  spread  in 
hurtHng  fragments  from  a  smoking  crater  in 
the  roadway.  There  are  a  few  minutes  of  mad 
frenzy  among  those  people  assembled  there. 
Then  a  measure  of  quiet  succeeds  to  the 
tumult.  The  work  of  rescue  starts.  The 
woman  who  vended  papers  is  a  crushed  mass 
under  the  wreckage  of  her  kiosk;  the  girl  who 
sold  car  tickets  is  dead  and  mangled  beneath 
her  flattened  booth;  the  waiter  who  wiped  the 
table-tops  off  lies  among  his  tables  now,  the 
whole  crown  of  his  head  sliced  away  by  slivers 
of  glass;  here  and  there  in  the  square  are  scat- 
tered small  motionless  clumps  that  resemble 
heaps  of  bloodied  and  torn  rags.  Wounded 
men  and  women  are  being  carried  away, 
groaning  and  screaming  as  they  go.  But  in 
the  edge  of  the  woods  at  St.  Gobain  the  Kaiser 
is  climbing  into  his  car  to  ride  to  his  head- 
quarters. It  is  his  breakfast-time  and  past  it 
and  he  has  a  fine  appetite  this  morning.  The 
picture  is  complete.  The  campaign  for  Kultur 
in  the  world  has  scored  another  triumph,  the 
said  score  standing:  Seven  dead;  fifteen  in- 
jured. 


[  234  ] 


CHAPTER  XV 
WANTED:  A  FOOL-PROOF  WAR 

THERE  was  a  transportload  of  newly 
made  officers  coming  over  for  service 
here  in  France.  There  was  on  board 
one  gentleman  in  uniform  who  bore 
himself,  as  the  saying  goes,  with  an  air.  By 
reason  of  that  air  and  by  reason  of  a  certain 
intangible  atmospheric  something  about  him 
difficult  to  define  in  words  he  seemed  intent 
upon  establishing  himself  upon  a  plane  far  re- 
mote from  and  inaccessible  to  these  fellow 
voyagers  of  his  who  were  crossing  the  sea  to 
serve  in  the  line,  or  to  act  as  interpreters,  or 
to  go  on  staffs,  or  to  work  with  the  Red  Cross 
or  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  or  the  K.  of  C.  or  what  not. 
He  had  what  is  called  the  superior  manner,  if 
you  get  what  I  mean — and  you  should  get 
what  I  mean,  reader,  if  ever  you  had  lived,  as 
I  have,  for  a  period  of  years  hard  by  and  ad- 
jacent to  that  particular  stretch  of  the  eastern 
seaboard  of  North  America  where,  as  nowhere 
else  along  the  Atlantic  Ocean  or  in  the  in- 
terior, are  to  be  found  in  numbers  those  fa- 

[  235  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

voured  beings  who  acquire  merit  unutterable 
by  belonging  to,  or  by  being  distantly  related 
to,  or  by  being  socially  acquainted  with,  the 
families  that  have  nothing  but. 

Nevertheless,  and  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing, divers  of  his  brother  travellers  failed 
to  keep  their  distance.  Toward  this  distin- 
guished gentleman  they  deported  themselves 
with  a  familiarity  and  an  offhandedness  that 
must  have  been  acutely  distasteful  to  one  un- 
accustomed to  moving  in  a  mixed  and  miscella- 
neous company. 

Accordingly  he  took  steps  on  the  second  day 
out  to  put  them  in  their  proper  places.  A 
list  was  being  circulated  to  get  up  a  subscrip- 
tion for  something  or  other,  and  almost  the 
very  first  person  to  whom  this  list  came  in  its 
rounds  of  the  first  cabin  was  the  person  in 
question.  He  took  out  a  gold-mounted  foun- 
tain pen  from  his  pocket  and  in  a  fair  round  hand 
inscribed  himself  thus: 

"Bejones  of  Tuxedo" 

There  were  no  initials — royalty  hath  not 
need  for  initials — but  just  the  family  name  and 
the  name  of  the  town  so  fortunate  as  to  number 
among  its  residents  this  notable — which  names 
for  good  reasons  I  have  purposely  changed. 
Otherwise  the  impressive  incident  occurred  as 
here  narrated. 

But  those  others  just  naturally  refused  to  be 
either  abashed  or  abated.    They  must  have  been 

[236] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

an  irreverent,  sacrilegious  lot,  by  all  accounts. 
The  next  man  to  whom  the  subscription  was  car- 
ried took  note  of  the  new  fashion  in  signatures 
and  then  gravely  wrote  himself  down  as  "Spirits 
of  Niter";  and  the  next  man  called  himself 
"Henri  of  Navarre";  and  the  third,  it  devel- 
oped, was  no  other  than  "Cream  of  Tartar"; 
and  the  next  was  "Timon  of  Athens";  and  the 
next  "Mother  of  Vinegar" — and  so  on  and  so 
forth,  while  waves  of  ribald  and  raucous  laugh- 
ter shook  the  good  ship  from  stem  to  stern. 

However,  the  derisive  ones  reckoned  without 
their  host.  For  them  the  superior  mortal  had 
a  yet  more  formidable  shot  in  the  locker.  On 
the  following  day  he  approached  three  of  the 
least  impressed  of  his  temporary  associates  as 
they  stood  upon  the  promenade  deck,  and 
apropos  of  nothing  that  was  being  said  or  done 
at  the  moment  he,  speaking  in  a  clear  voice, 
delivered  himself  of  the^  following  crushing  re- 
mark: 

"When  I  was  born  there  were  only  two 
houses  in  the  city  of  New  York  that  had  porte- 
cocheres,  and  I — I  was  born  in  one  of  them." 

Inconceivable  though  it  may  appear,  the  fact 
is  to  be  recorded  that  even  this  disclosure 
failed  to  silence  the  tongues  of  ridicule  aboard 
that  packet  boat.  Rather  did  it  enhance  them, 
seeming  but  to  spur  the  misguided  vulgarians 
on  and  on  to  further  evidences  of  disrespect. 
There  are  reasons  for  believing  that  Bejones  of 
Tuxedo,  who  had  been  born  in  the  drafty  semi- 

[  237  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

publicity  of  a  porte-cochere,  left  the  vessel 
upon  its  arrival  with  some  passing  sense  of  re- 
lief, though  it  should  be  stated  that  up  until 
the  moment  of  his  debarkation  he  continued 
ever,  while  under  the  eye  of  the  plebes  and  com- 
moners about  him,  to  bear  himself  after  a 
mode  and  a  port  befitting  the  station  to  which 
Nature  had  called  him.  He  vanished  into  the 
hinterland  of  France  and  was  gone  to  take  up 
his  duties ;  but  he  left  behind  him,  among  those 
who  had  travelled  hither  in  his  company,  a 
recollection  which  neither  time  nor  vicissitude 
can  efface.  Presumably  he  is  still  in  the  serv- 
ice, unless  it  be  that  ere  now  the  service  has 
found  out  what  was  the  matter  w^ith  it. 

I  have  taken  the  little  story  concerning  him 
as  a  text  for  this  article,  not  because  Bejones 
of  Tuxedo  is  in  any  way  typical  of  any  group 
or  subgroup  of  men  in  our  new  Army — indeed 
I  am  sure  that  he,  like  the  blooming  of  the 
century  plant,  is  a  thing  which  happens  only 
once  in  a  hundred  years,  and  not  then  unless  all 
the  conditions  are  salubrious.  I  have  chosen 
the  little  tale  to  keynote  my  narrative  for  the 
reason  that  I  believe  it  may  serve  in  illustration 
of  a  situation  that  has  arisen  in  Europe,  and 
especially  in  France,  these  last  few  months — a 
condition  that  does  not  affect  our  Army  so 
much  as  it  affects  sundry  side  issues  connected 
more  or  less  indirectly  with  the  presence  on 
European  soil  of  an  army  from  the  United 
States. 

[  238  ] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

Like  most  of  the  nations  having  representa- 
tive forms  of  government  that  have  gone  into 
this  war,  we  went  in  as  an  amateur  nation  so 
far  as  knowledge  of  the  actual  business  of  mod- 
ern warfare  was  concerned.  Like  them,  we 
have  had  to  learn  the  same  hard  lessons  that 
they  learned,  in  the  same  hard  school  of  experi- 
ence. Our  national  amateurishness  beforehand 
was  not  altogether  to  our  discredit;  neither  was 
it  altogether  to  our  credit.  Nobody  now  denies 
that  we  should  have  been  better  prepared 
for  eventualities  than  we  were.  On  the  other 
hand  it  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  a  peace- 
ful commercial  country  such  as  ours — which 
until  lately  had  been  politically  remote  as  it 
was  geographically  aloof  upon  its  own  hemi- 
sphere from  the  political  storm-centres  of  the 
Old  World,  and  in  which  there  was  no  taint  of 
the  militarism  that  has  been  Germany's  curse, 
and  will  yet  be  her  undoing — should  in  times 
of  peace  greatly  concern  itself  with  any  save 
the  broad  general  details  of  the  game  of  war, 
except  as  a  heart-moving  spectacle  enacted 
upon  the  stage  of  another  continent  and  viewed 
by  us  with  sympathetic  and  sorrowing  eyes 
across  three  or  four  thousand  miles  of  salt 
water.  Prior  to  our  advent  into  it  the  war 
had  no  great  appeal  upon  the  popular  con- 
science of  the  United  States.  Out  of  the  fulness 
of  our  hearts  and  out  of  the  abundance  of  our 
prosperity  we  gave  our  dollars,  and  gave  and 
gave  and  kept  on  giving  them  for  the  succour 

[239] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

of  the  victims  of  the  world  catastrophe;  but  a 
sense  of  the  impending  peril  for  our  own  insti- 
tutions came  home  to  but  few  among  us. 
Here  and  there  were  individuals  who  scented 
the  danger;  but  they  were  as  prophets  crying 
in  the  wilderness;  the  masses  either  could  not 
or  would  not  see  it.  They  would  not  make 
ready  against  the  evil  days  ahead. 

So  we  went  into  this  most  highly  specialised 
industry,  which  war  has  become,  as  amateurs 
mainly.  Our  Navy  was  no  amateur  navy,  as 
very  speedily  developed,  and  before  this  year's 
fighting  is  over  our  enemy  is  going  to  realise 
that  our  Army  is  not  an  amateur  army.  We 
may  have  been  greenhorns  at  the  trade  wherein 
Germans  were  experts  by  training  and  educa- 
tion; still  we  fancy  ourselves  as  a  reasonably 
adaptable  breed.  But  if  the  truth  is  to  be 
told  it  must  be  confessed  that  in  certain  of  the 
Allied  branches  of  the  business  we  are  yet 
behaving  like  amateurs.  After  more  than  a 
year  of  actual  and  potential  participation  in 
the  conflict  we  even  now  are  doing  things  and 
suffering  things  to  be  done  which  would  make 
us  the  laughingstock  of  our  allies  if  they  had 
time  or  temper  for  laughing.  I  am  not  speaking 
of  the  conduct  of  our  operations  in  the  field 
or  in  the  camps  or  on  the  high  seas.  I  am 
speaking  with  particular  reference  to  what 
might  be  called  some  of  the  by-products. 

None  of  us  is  apt  to  forget,  or  cease  to  remem- 
ber with  pride,  the  flood  of  patriotic  sacrifice 

[  240  ]> 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

that  swept  our  country  in  the  spring  of  1917. 
No  other  self-governing  people  ever  adopted  a 
universal  draft  before  their  shores  had  been 
invaded  and  before  any  of  their  manhood  had 
fallen  in  battle.  No  other  self-governing  people 
ever  accepted  the  restrictions  of  a  food-ration- 
ing scheme  before  any  of  the  actual  provisions 
concerning  that  food-rationing  scheme  had 
been  embodied  into  the  written  laws.  Other 
countries  did  it  under  compulsion,  after  their 
resources  showed  signs  of  exhaustion.  We  did 
it  voluntarily;  and  it  was  all  the  more  wonder- 
ful that  we  should  have  done  it  voluntarily 
when  all  about  us  was  human  provender  in 
a  prodigal  fullness.  There  was  plenty  for  our 
own  tables. 

By  self-imposed  regulations  we  cut  down  our 
supplies  so  that  our  allies  might  be  fed  with 
the  surplus  thus  made  available.  Outside  of 
a  few  sorry  creatures  there  was  scarcely  to  be 
found  in  America  an  individual,  great  or  small, 
who  did  not  give,  and  give  freely,  of  the  work  of 
his  or  her  heart  and  hands  to  this  or  that 
phase  of  the  mighty  undertaking  upon  which 
our  Government  had  embarked  and  to  which 
our  President,  speaking  for  us  all,  had  solemnly 
dedicated  all  that  we  were  or  had  been  or  ever 
should  be. 

All  sorts  of  commissions,  some  useful  and 
important  beyond  telling,  some  unutterably 
unuseful  and  incredibly  unimportant,  sprang 
into  being.     And  to  and  fro  in  the  land,   in 

[241  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

numbers  amounting  to  a  vast  multitude,  went 
the  woman  who  wanted  to  do  her  part,  with- 
out having  the  least  idea  of  what  that  part 
would  be  or  how  she  would  go  about  doing  it. 
She  knew  nothing  of  nursing;  kitchen  work,  a 
vulgar  thing,  was  abhorrent  to  her  nature  and 
to  her  manicured  nails;  she  could  not  cook, 
neither  could  she  sew  or  sweep — but  she  must 
do  her  part. 

She  was  not  satisfied  to  stay  on  at  home 
and  by  hard  endeavour  to  fit  herself  for  help- 
ing in  the  task  confronting  every  rational 
and  willing  being  between  the  two  oceans. 
No,  sir-ree,  that  would  be  too  prosaic,  too 
commonplace  an  employment  for  her.  Be- 
sides, the  working  classes  could  attend  to  that 
job.  She  must  do  her  part  abroad — either  in 
France  within  sound  of  the  guns  or  in  racked 
and  desolated  Belgium.  Of  course  her  inten- 
tions were  good.  The  intentions  of  such  per- 
sons are  nearly  always  good,  because  they 
change  them  before  they  have  a  chance  to  go 
stale. 

I  think  the  average  woman  of  this  type 
had  a  mental  conception  of  herself  wearing  a 
wimple  and  a  coif  of  purest  white,  in  a  frock 
that  was  all  crisp  blue  linen  and  big  pearl 
buttons,  with  one  red  cross  blazing  upon  her 
sleeve  and  another  on  her  cap,  sitting  at  the 
side  of  a  spotless  bed  in  a  model  hospital  that 
was  fragrant  with  flowers,  and  ministering 
daintily  to  a  splendid  wounded  hero  with  the 

[242  ] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

face  of  a  demigod  and  the  figure  of  a  model  for 
an  underwear  ad.  Preferably  this  youth  would 
be  a  gallant  aviator,  and  his  wound  would  be 
in  the  head  so  that  from  time  to  time  she  might 
adjust  the  spotless  bandage  about  his  brow. 

I  used  to  wish  sometimes  when  I  met  such 
a  lady  that  I  might  have  drawn  for  her  the 
picture  of  reality  as  I  had  seen  it  more  times 
than  once — tired,  earnest,  competent  women 
who  slept,  what  sleep  they  got,  in  lousy  billets 
that  were  barren  of  the  simplest  comforts, 
sleeping  with  gas  masks  under  their  pillows,  and 
who  for  ten  or  twelve  or  fifteen  or  eighteen 
hours  on  a  stretch  performed  the  most  nau- 
seating and  the  most  necessary  offices  for  poor 
suffering  befouled  men  lying  on  blankets  upon 
straw  pallets  in  wrecked  dirty  houses  or  in 
half-ruined  stables  from  which  the  dung  had 
hurriedly  been  shoveled  out  in  order  to  make 
room  for  suffering  soldiers — stables  that  reeked 
with  the  smells  of  carbolic  and  iodoform  and 
with  much  worse  smells.  It  is  an  extreme 
case  that  I  am  describing,  but  then  the  picture 
is  a  true  picture,  whereas  the  idealistic  fancy 
painted  by  the  lady  who  just  must  do  her 
part  at  the  Front  had  no  existence  except  in 
the  movies  or  in  her  own  imagination. 

It  never  occurred  to  her  that  there  would 
be  slop  jars  to  be  emptied  or  filthy  bodies,  alive 
with  crawling  vermin,  to  be  cleansed.  It  never 
occurred  to  her  that  she  would  take  up  room 
aboard  ship  that  might  better  be  filled  with 

[  243  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

horse  collars  or  hardtack  or  insect  powder;  nor 
that  while  over  here  she  would  consume  food 
that  otherwise  would  stay  the  stomach  of  a 
fighting  man  or  a  working  woman;  nor  that 
if  ever  she  reached  the  battle  zone  she  would 
encounter  living  conditions  appallingly  bare 
and  primitive  beyond  anything  she  could  con- 
ceive; nor  that  she  could  not  care  for  herself, 
and  was  fitted  neither  by  training  nor  instinct 
to  help  care  for  any  one  else. 

When  I  left  America  last  winter  a  great 
flow  of  national  sanity  had  already  begun  to 
rise  above  the  remaining  scourings  of  national 
hysteria;  and  the  lady  whose  portrait  I  have 
tried  in  the  foregoing  paragraphs  to  sketch 
was  not  quite  so  numerous  or  so  vociferous 
as  she  had  been  in  those  first  few  exalted 
weeks  and  months  following  our  entrance  into 
the  war  as  a  full  partner  in  the  greatest  of 
enterprises.  My  surprise  was  all  the  greater 
therefore  to  find  that  she  had  beaten  me  across 
the  water.  She  had  pretty  well  disappeared 
at  home. 

One  typical  example  of  this  strange  species 
crossed  in  the  same  ship  with  me.  Heaven 
alone  know^s  what  political  or  social  influence 
had  availed  to  secure  her  passport  for  her. 
But  she  had  it,  and  with  it  credentials  from  an 
organisation  that  should  have  known  better. 
She  was  a  woman  of  independent  wealth 
seemingly,  and  her  motives  undoubtedly  were 
of  the  best;    but    as    somebody    might  have 

[  24,4] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

said:  Good  motives  butter  no  parsnips,  and 
hell  is  paved  with  buttered  parsnips.  Her 
notion  was  to  drive  a  car  at  the  Front — an 
ambulance  or  a  motor  truck  or  a  general's 
automobile  or  something.  She  had  owned 
cars,  but  she  had  never  driven  one,  as  she 
confessed;  but  that  was  a  mere  detail.  She 
would  learn  how,  some  day  after  she  got  to 
Europe,  and  then  somebody  or  other  would 
provide  her  with  a  car  and  she  would  start 
driving  it;  such  was  her  intention.  Unaided 
she  could  no  more  have  wrested  a  busted  tire 
off  of  a  rusted  rim  than  she  could  have  mar- 
celled her  own  back  hair;  and  so  far  as  her 
knowledge  of  practical  mechanics  went,  I  am 
sure  no  reasonably  prudent  person  would  have 
trusted  her  with  a  nutpick;  but  she  had  the 
serene  confidence  of  an  inspired  and  magnificent 
ignorance. 

She  had  her  uniform  too.  She  had  brought 
it  with  her  and  she  wore  it  constantly.  She 
said  she  designed  it  herself,  but  I  think  she 
fibbed  there.  No  one  but  a  Fifth  Avenue 
mantuamaker  of  the  sex  which  used  to  be  the 
gentler  sex  before  it  got  the  vote  could  have 
thought  up  a  vestment  so  ornate,  so  swagger 
and  so  complicated. 

It  was  replete  with  shoulder  straps  and 
abounding  in  pleats  and  gores  and  gussets 
and  things.  Just  one  touch  was  needed  to 
make  it  a  finished  confection:  By  rights  it 
should  have  buttoned  up  the  back. 

[  245  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

The  woman  who  had  the  cabin  next  to  hers 
in  confidence  told  a  group  of  us  that  she  had 
it  from  the  stewardess  that  it  took  the  lady  a 
full  hour  each  day  to  get  herself  properly 
harnessed  into  her  caparisons.  Still  I  must 
say  the  effect,  visually  speaking,  was  worthy 
of  the  effort;  and  besides,  the  woman  who 
told  us  may  have  been  exaggerating.  She  was 
a  registered  and  qualified  nurse  who  knew  her 
trade  and  wore  matter-of-fact  garments  and 
flat-heeled,  broad-soled  shoes.  She  was  not 
very  exciting  to  look  at,  but  she  radiated 
efficiency.  She  knew  exactly  what  she  would  do 
when  she  got  over  here  and  exactly  how  she 
would  do  it.  We  agreed  among  ourselves  that 
if  we  were  in  quest  of  the  ornamental  we 
would  search  out  the  lady  who  meant  to  drive 
the  car — provided  there  was  any  car;  but  that 
if  anything  serious  ailed  any  of  us  we  would 
rather  have  the  services  of  one  of  the  plain 
nursing  sisterhood  than  a  whole  skating-rinkful 
of  the  other  kind  round. 

In  the  latter  part  of  1917  there  landed  in 
France  a  young  woman  hailing  from  a  Far 
Western  city  whose  family  is  well  known  on 
the  Pacific  Slope.  She  brought  with  her  letters 
of  introduction  signed  by  imposing  names  and 
a  comfortable  sum  of  money,  which  had  been 
subscribed  partly  out  of  her  own  pocket  and 
partly  out  of  the  pockets  of  well-meaning 
persons  in  her  home  state  whom  she  had  suc- 
ceeded in  interesting  in  her  particular  scheme 

[  246  ] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

of  wartime  endeavour.  She  was  very  fair  to 
see  and  her  uniform,  by  all  accounts,  was  very 
sweet  to  look  upon,  it  being  a  horizon-blue  in 
colour  with  much  braiding  upon  the  sleeves 
and  collar.  It  has  been  my  observation  since 
coming  over  that  when  in  doubt  regarding 
their  vocations  and  their  intentions  these 
unattached  lady  zealots  go  in  very  strongly 
for  striking  effects  in  the  matter  of  habili- 
ments. Along  the  boulevards  and  in  the  tea- 
rooms I  have  encountered  a  considerable  num- 
ber who  appeared  to  have  nothing  to  do  except 
to  wear  their  uniforms. 

However,  this  young  person  had  no  doubt 
whatever  concerning  her  motives  and  her 
purposes.  The  whole  thing  was  all  mapped  out 
in  her  head,  as  developed  when  she  called  upon 
a  high  official  of  our  Expeditionary  Forces  at 
his  headquarters  in  the  southern  part  of  France. 
She  told  him  she  had  come  hither  for  the  express 
purpose  of  feeding  our  starving  aviators.  He 
might  have  told  her  that  so  long  as  there  con- 
tinued to  be  served  fried  potato  chips  free 
at  the  Crillon  bar  there  was  but  little  danger 
of  any  airman  going  hungry,  in  Paris  at  least. 
What  he  did  tell  her  when  he  had  rallied  some- 
what from  the  shock  was  that  he  saw  no  way 
to  gratify  her  in  her  benevolent  desire  unless 
he  could  catch  a  few  aviators  and  lock  them  up 
and  starve  them  for  two  or  three  days,  and  he 
rather  feared  the  young  men  might  object  to 
such  treatment.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  under- 

[247] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

stand  he  so  forgot  himself  as  to  laugh  at  the 
young  woman. 

At  any  rate  his  attitude  was  so  unsym- 
pathetic that  he  practically  spoiled  the  whole 
war  for  her,  and  she  gave  him  a  piece  of  her 
mind  and  went  away.  She  had  departed  out 
of  the  country  before  I  arrived  in  it,  and  I 
learned  of  her  and  her  uniform  and  her  mission 
and  her  disappointment  at  its  unfulfillment  by 
hearsay  only;  but  I  have  no  doubt,  in  view  of 
some  of  the  things  I  have  myself  seen,  that  the 
account  which  reached  me  was  substantially 
correct.  Along  this  line  I  am  now  prepared  to 
believe  almost  anything. 

Here,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  case  of  which  I 
have  direct  and  first-hand  knowledge.  I  en- 
countered a  group  of  young  women  attached 
lo  one  of  the  larger  American  organisations 
engaged  in  systematised  charities  and  mercies 
on  this  side  of  the  water.  Now,  plainly  these 
young  women  were  inspired  by  the  very  highest 
ideals;  that  there  was  no  discounting.  They 
were  full  of  the  spirit  of  service  and  sacrifice. 
Mainly  they  were  college  graduates.  Without 
exception  they  were  well  bred;  almost  without 
exception  they  were  well  educated. 

The  particular  tasks  for  which  they  had 
been  detailed  were  to  care  for  pauperised 
repatriates  returning  to  France  through  Switzer- 
land from  areas  of  their  country  occupied  by 
the  enemy,  and  to  aid  these  poor  folks  in  re- 
establishing their  home  life  and  to  give  them 

[  248  ] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

lessons  in  domestic  science.  To  the  success  of 
their  ministrations  there  was  just  one  draw- 
back: They  were  deahng  with  peasants  mostly 
— furtive,  shy,  secretive  folks  who  under  ordi- 
nary circumstances  would  be  bitterly  resentful  of 
any  outside  interference  by  aliens  with  their 
mode  of  life,  and  who  in  these  cases  had  been 
rendered  doubly  suspicious  by  reason  of  the 
misfortunes  they  had  endured  while  under 
the  thumb  of  the  Germans. 

To  understand  them,  to  plumb  diplomatically 
the  underlying  reasons  for  their  prejudices,  to 
get  upon  a  basis  of  helpful  sympathy  with 
them,  it  was  highly  essential  that  those  dealing 
with  them  not  only  should  have  infinite  tact  and 
finesse  but  should  be  able  to  fathom  the  mean- 
ing of  a  nod  or  a  gesture,  a  sidelong  glance  of  the 
eyes  or  the  inflection  of  a  muttered  word. 
And  yet  of  those  zealous  young  women  who 
had  been  assigned  to  this  delicate  task  there 
was  scarcely  one  in  six  who  spoke  any  French 
at  all.  It  inevitably  followed  that  the  bulk 
of  their  patient  labours  should  go  for  naught; 
moreover,  while  they^  continued  in  this  employ- 
ment they  Vv^ere  merely  occupying  space  in  an 
already  crowded  country  and  consuming  food 
in  an  already  needy  country;  the  both  of  which 
— space  and  food — were  needed  for  people  who 
could  accomplish  effective  things. 

An  American  woman  who  is  reputed  to  be  a 
dietetic  specialist  came  over  not  long  ago, 
backed  by  funds  donated  in  the  States.     Her 

[249] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE     COMING 

instructions  were  to  establish  cafeterias  at  some 
of  the  larger  French  munition  works.  Probably 
her  chagrin  was  equalled  only  by  her  astonish- 
ment when  she  learned  that  for  reasons  which 
seemed  to  it  good  and  sufficient — and  which  no 
doubt  were — the  French  Government  did  not 
want  any  American-plan  cafeterias  established 
at  any  of  its  munition  works.  Apparently  it 
had  not  seemed  feasible  and  proper  to  the  spon- 
sors of  the  diet  specialist  to  find  out  before 
dispatching  her  overseas  whether  the  plan 
would  be  agreeable  to  the  authorities  here;  or 
whether  there  already  were  eating  places  suit- 
able to  the  desires  of  the  working  people  at 
these  munition  plants;  or  how  long  it  would 
take,  given  the  most  favourable  conditions, 
to  cure  the  workers  of  their  tenacious  instinct 
for  eating  the  kind  of  middav  meal  thev  have 
been  eating  for  some  hundreds  of  years  and 
accustom  them  and  their  palates  and  their 
stomachs  to  the  Yankee  quick  lunch  with  its 
baked  pork  and  beans,  its  buckwheat  cakes 
with  maple  sirup  and  its  four  kinds  of  pie.  In 
their  zeal  the  promoters,  it  would  seem,  had 
entirely  overlooked  those  essential  details.  It  is 
just  such  omissions  as  this  one  that  the  fine 
frenzy  of  helping  out  in  wartime  appears  to 
develop  in  a  nation  that  is  given  to  boasting 
of  its  business  efficiency  and  that  vaunts  itself 
that  it  knows  how  to  give  generously  without 
wasting  foolishly. 

The  field  manager  of  an  organisation  that 

[250] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

is  doing  a  great  deal  for  the  comfort  of  our 
soldiers  and  the  soldiers  of  our  allies  told 
me  of  one  of  his  experiences.  He  had  a  sense 
of  humour  and  he  could  laugh  over  it,  but  I 
think  I  noted  a  suggestion  of  resentment  behind 
the  laughter.  He  said  that  some  months  before 
he  set  up  and  assumed  charge  of  a  plant  well 
up  toward  the  trenches  in  a  sector  that  had 
been  taken  over  by  the  American  troops.  It 
was  a  large  and  elaborate  concern,  as  these 
concerns  are  rated  in  the  field.  The  men 
were  pleased  with  its  accommodations  and 
facilities,  and  the  field  manager  was  proud  of  it. 

One  day  there  appeared  a  businesslike  young 
woman  who  introduced  herself  as  belonging  to 
a  kindred  organisation  that  was  charged  with 
the  work  of  decorating  the  interiors  of  such 
establishments  as  the  one  over  which  he  pre- 
sided. Somewhat  puzzled,  he  showed  her, 
first  of  all,  his  canteen.  It  was  as  most  such 
places  are:  There  were  boxes  of  edibles  upon 
counters,  in  open  boxes,  so  that  the  soldier 
customers  might  appraise  the  wares  before 
investing;  upon  the  shelves  there  were  soft 
drinks  and  smoking  materials  and  all  manner 
of  small  articles  of  wearing  apparel;  likewise 
baseballs  and  safety  razors  and  soap,  toilet 
kits  and  the  rest  of  it.  Altogether  the  manager 
and  his  two  assistants  were  rather  pleased  with 
the  arrangement. 

The  newly  arrived  young  woman  swept  the 
scene  with  a  cold  professional  eye. 

[251] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

"On  the  whole  this  will  do  fairly  well,"  she 
said  with  a  certain  briskness  in  her  tone. 
"Yes,  I  may  say  it  will  do  very  well  indeed — 
with  certain  changes,  certain  touches." 

"As  for  example,  what,  please?"  inquired 
the  superintendent. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "for  one  thing  we  must 
put  up  some  bright  curtains  at  the  windows; 
and  to  lighten  up  the  background  I  think  we'll 
run  a  stenciled  pattern  in  some  cheerful  colour 
round  the  walls  at  the  top. " 

It  was  not  for  the  manager  to  inquire  how 
the  decorator  meant  to  get  her  curtains  and 
her  stencils  and  her  wall  paints  up  over  a 
road  that  was  being  alternately  gassed  and 
shelled  at  nights  and  on  which  the  traffic 
capacity  was  already  taxed  to  the  utmost  by 
the  business  of  bringing  up  supplies,  munitions 
and  rations  from  the  base  some  fifteen  miles  in 
the  rear.  He  merely  bowed  and  awaited  the 
lady's  further  commands.  "And  now,"  she 
said,  "where  is  the  rest  room?" 

"The  rest  room,  did  you  say?" 

"Certainly,  the  rest  room — the  recreation 
hall,  the  place  where  these  poor  men  may  go 
for  privacy  and  innocent  amusement?" 

"Well,  you  see,  thus  close  up  near  the  Front 
we  haven't  been  able  to  make  provision  for  a 
regular  rest  room,"  explained  the  manager. 
"Besides,  in  case  of  a  withdrawal  or  an  attack 
we  might  have  to  pull  out  in  a  hurry  and  leave 
behind  everything  that  is  not  readily  portable 

[252] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

on  wagons  or  trucks.  The  nearest  approach 
that  we  have  to  a  rest  room  is  here  at  the  rear. " 

He  led  the  way  to  a  room  at  the  back.  It 
contained  such  plenishings  as  one  generally 
finds  in  improvised  quarters  in  the  field — that 
is  to  say,  it  contained  a  curious  equipment 
made  up  partly  of  crude  bits  of  furniture  col- 
lected on  the  spot  out  of  villagers'  abandoned 
homes  and  partly  of  makeshift  stools  and  tables 
coopered  together  from  barrels  and  boxes  and 
stray  bits  of  planking.  Also  it  contained  at  this 
time  as  many  soldiers  as  could  crowd  into  it. 
A  phonograph  was  grinding  out  popular  airs, 
and  divers  games  of  checkers  and  cards  were  in 
progress,  each  with  its  fringe  of  interested 
onlookers  ringing  in  the  players. 

*'0h,  but  this  will  never  do — never!"  stated 
the  inspecting  lady.  "It  is  too  bare,  too  cheer- 
less! It  lacks  atmosphere.  It  lacks  coziness; 
it  lacks  any  appeal  to  the  senses — in  short  it 
lacks  everything!  We  must  have  some  imme- 
diate improvements  here  by  all  means." 

The  man  was  beginning  to  lose  his  temper. 
By  an  effort  he  retained  it. 

"The  men  seem  fairly  well  satisfied;  at  least 
I  have  heard  no  complaint,"  he  said.  "What 
would  you  suggest  in  the  way  of  changes?" 

As  she  answered,  the  visitor  ticked  off  the 
items  of  her  mental  inventorv  of  essentials  on 
her  fingers. 

"Well,  to  begin  with  we  must  clear  all  this 
litter  out  of  here,"  she  said.     "Then  we  must 

[  253] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 


install  some  really  comfortable  chairs  and  at 
least  two  or  three  roomy  sofas  and  some  simple 
couches  where  the  men  may  lie  down.  I  should 
also  like  to  see  a  piano  here.  That,  with  the 
addition  of  some  curtains  at  the  windows  and 
some  simple  treatment  of  the  walls  and  a  few 
appropriate  pictures  properly  spaced  and  prop- 
erly hung,  will  be  different,  I  think. " 

"Yes,"  demurred  the  manager,  "but  ad- 
mitting that  we  could  get  the  things  you 
have  enumerated  up  here,  another  problem 
would  arise:  This  room,  which,  as  you  see,  is 
not  large,  would  be  so  crowded  with  the  furnish- 
ings that  there  would  be  room  in  it  for  very 
many  less  men  than  usually  come  here.  There 
are  probably  fifty  men  in  it  now.  If  it  were 
filled  up  with  sofas  and  couches  and  a  piano 
I  doubt  whether  we  could  crowd  twenty  men 
inside  of  it." 

"Very  well,  then,"  stated  the  lady  deco- 
rator calmly,  "you  must  admit  only  twenty 
men  at  a  time. " 

"Quite  so;  but  how,"  he  demanded — "how 
am  I  going  to  select  the  twenty?" 

The  young  woman  considered  the  question 
for  a  moment.     Then  a   solution   came  to  her. 

"I  should  select  the  twenty  neatest  ones," 
she  said. 

Whereupon  the  manager  excused  himself  and 
went  out  to  frame  a  dispatch  to  headquarters 
embodying  an  ultimatum,  which  ultimatum  was 
that  the  lady  decorator  went  away  from  there 

[  254  ] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

forthwith  or  his  resignation  must  take  effect, 
coincident  with  his  immediate  departure  from 
his  present  post.  The  home  office  must  have 
called  the  lady  off,  because  when  I  saw  him  he 
was  still  in  harness,  and  swinging  a  man-size 
job  in  a  competent  way. 

I  would  not  have  the  reader  believe  that  I  am 
casting  discredit  upon  either  the  patriotic  im- 
pulses or  the  honest  motives  of  the  bulk  of  the 
lay  workers  who  have  journeyed  to  Europe, 
paying  their  own  way  and  their  own  living 
expenses.  Often  they  arrive,  many  of  them,  to 
strike  hands  with  the  military  authorities  in  the 
task  which  faces  our  nation  on  Continental  soil. 
There  is  room  and  a  welcome  in  France,  in 
Italy,  in  England  and  in  Flanders  for  every 
civilian  recruit  who  really  knows  how  to  do 
something  helpful  and  who  has  the  strength, 
the  self-reliance  and  the  hardihood  to  perform 
that  particular  function  under  difficult  and  com- 
plicated conditions,  which  nearly  always  are 
physically  uncomfortable  and  which  may  be- 
come physically  dangerous. 

Nor  would  I  wish  any  one  to  assume  that  I  am 
deprecating  by  inference  or  by  frontal  attack 
the  very  fine  things  that  are  being  accomplished 
every  day  by  fine  American  women  and  girls 
who  answered  the  first  call  for  trained  helpers, 
to  serve  in  hospitals  or  canteens  or  huts,  in 
settlement  work  or  at  telephone  exchanges.  It 
will  make  any  American  thrill  with  pride  to 
enter  a  ward  where  the  American  Red  Cross  is 

[255] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

in  charge,  or  where  a  medical  unit  from  one  of 
the  great  hospitals  or  one  of  our  great  univer- 
sities back  home  has  control.  The  French  and 
the  British  are  quick  enough  to  speak  in  terms 
of  highest  praise  of  the  achievements  of  Ameri- 
can surgeons,  American  nurses  and  American 
ambulance  drivers.  They  say,  and  with  good 
reason  for  saying  it,  that  our  people  have  pluck 
and  that  they  have  skill  and  that  they  above 
all  are  amazingly  resourceful. 

Personally  I  know  of  no  smarter  exhibition 
of  native  wit  and  courage  that  the  war  has 
produced  than  was  shown  by  that  group  of 
Smith  College  girls  who  had  been  organising 
and  directing  colonisation  work  among  the  peas- 
ants in  the  reclaimed  districts  of  Northern 
France  and  who  were  driven  out  by  the  great 
spring  advance  of  the  Germans.  I  met  some 
of  those  young  women.  They  were  modest 
enough  in  describing  their  adventure.  It  was 
by  gathering  a  shred  of  a  story  there  and  a  scrap 
of  an  anecdote  here  that  I  was  able  to  piece  to- 
gether a  fairly  accurate  estimate  of  the  self- 
imposed  discipline,  the  clean-strained  grit  and 
the  initiative  which  marked  their  conduct 
through  three  trying  weeks. 

Perhaps  it  was  a  mistake  in  their  instance,  as 
in  the  instances  of  divers  similar  organisations, 
that  the  work  of  resettling  the  wasted  lands 
above  the  Aisne  and  the  Oise  should  have  been 
undertaken  at  points  that  would  be  menaced 
in  the  event  of  a  quick  onslaught  by  the  Prussian 

[256] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

high  command.  The  British,  I  understand, 
privately  objected  to  the  undertakings  on  the 
ground  that  the  presence  of  American  women 
in  villages  which  might  fall  again  into  the  foe's 
hands — and  which  as  it  turned  out  did  fall 
again  into  his  hands-— entailed  an  added  burden 
and  an  added  responsibility  upon  the  fighting 
forces.  The  British  were  right.  Practically  all 
of  the  repatriated  peasants  had  to  flee  for  the 
second  time,  abandoning  their  rebuilt  homes 
and  their  newly  sowed  fields. 

On  the  heels  of  these,  improvements  which 
represented  many  thousands  of  American  dollars 
and  many  months  of  painstaking  labour  on  the 
part  of  devoted  American  women  went  up  in 
flames.  The  torch  was  applied  rather  than  that 
the  little  model  houses  and  the  tons  of  donated 
supplies  on  hand  should  go  into  hostile  hands. 

Those  Smith  College  girls  did  not  run  away, 
though,  until  the  Germans  were  almost  upon 
them.  Up  to  the  very  last  minute  they  stayed 
at  their  posts,  feeding  ard  housing  not  only 
refugees  but  many  exhausted  soldiers,  British 
and  French,  who  staggered  in,  spent  and  sped 
after  alternately  fighting  and  retreating  through 
a  period  of  days  and  nights.  When  finally  they 
did  come  away  each  one  of  them  came  driving 
her  own  truck  and  bearing  in  it  a  load  of  worn- 
out  and  helpless  natives.  One  girl  brought  out 
a  troop  of  frightened  dwarfs  from  a  stranded 
travelling  caravan.  Another  ministered  day  and 
night  to  a  blind  woman  nearly  ninety  years  old 

[257] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

and  a  family  of  orphaned  babies.  The  passen- 
gers of  a  third  were  four  inmates  of  a  little  com- 
munal blind  asylum  that  happened  to  be  in 
the  invader's  path. 

On  the  way,  in  addition  to  tending  their 
special  charges,  they  cooked  and  served  hun- 
dreds of  meals  for  hungry  soldiers  and  hungry 
civilians.  They  spent  the  nights  in  towns 
under  shell  fire,  and  when  at  length  the  German 
drive  had  been  checked  they  assembled  their 
forces  in  Beauvais.  Thus  and  with  charac- 
teristic adaptability  some  became  drivers  of 
ambulances  and  supply  trucks  plying  along  the 
lines  of  communication,  and  some  opened  a 
kitchen  for  the  benefit  of  passing  soldiers  at 
the  local  railway  station.  If  the  faculty  and 
the  students  and  the  alumnae  of  Smith  College 
did  not  hold  a  celebration  when  the  true  story 
of  what  happened  in  March  and  April  reached 
them  they  were  lacking  in  appreciation — that's 
all  I  have  to  say  about  it. 

Right  here  seems  a  good-enough  place  for  me 
to  slip  in  a  few  words  of  approbation  for  the  work 
which  another  'organisation  has  accomplished 
in  France  since  we  put  our  men  into  the  field. 
Nobody  asked  me  to  speak  in  its  favour  because 
so  far  as  I  can  find  out  it  has  no  publicity  de- 
partment. I  am  referring  to  the  Salvation  Army 
— may  it  live  forever  for  the  service  which,  with- 
out price  and  without  any  boasting  on  the  part 
of  its  personnel,  it  is  rendering  to  our  boys  in 
France ! 

[258] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 


A    good    many    of    us    who    hadn't    enough 
religion,  and  a  good  many  more  of  us  who  may- 
hap had  too  much  rehgion,  look  rather  contemp- 
tuously upon  the  methods  of  the  Salvationists. 
Some  have  gone  so  far  as  to  intimate  that  the 
Salvation  Army  was  vulgar  in  its  methods  and 
lacking  in  dignity  and  even  in  reverence.     Some 
have  intimated  that  converting  a  sinner  to  the 
tap  of  a  bass  drum  or  the  tinkle  of  a  tambourine 
was   an   improper   process    altogether.     Never 
again,   though,   shall  I  hear  the  blare  of  the 
cornet  as  it  cuts  into  the  chorus  of  hallelujah 
whoops  where  a  ring  of  blue-bonneted  women 
and   blue-capped   men   stand   exhorting   on    a 
city  street  corner  under  the  gas  lights,  without 
recalling  what  some  of  their  enrolled  brethren — 
and  sisters — have  done  and  are  doing  in  Europe. 
The  American  Salvation  Army  in  France  is 
small,  but,  believe  me,  it  is  powerfully  busy! 
Its  war  delegation  came  over  without  any  fan- 
fare of  the  trumpets  of  publicity.     It  has  no 
paid  press  agents  here  and  no  impressive  head- 
quarters.    There    are    no    well-known    names, 
other  than  the  names  of  its  executive  heads,  on 
its  rosters  or  on  its  advisory  boards.     None  of 
its  members  is  housed   at  an   expensive  hotel 
and  none  of  them  has  handsome  automobiles 
in  which  to  travel  about  from  place  to  place. 
No  compaigns  to  raise  nation-wide  millions  of 
dollars  for  the  cost  of  its  ministrations  overseas 
were  ever  held  at  home.     I  imagine  it  is  the 
pennies  of  the  poor  that  mainly  fill  its  war  chest. 

[259] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

I  imagine,  too,  that  sometimes  its  finances  are 
an  uncertain  quantity.  Incidentally  I  am  as- 
sured that  not  one  of  its  male  workers  here  is 
of  draft  age  unless  he  holds  exemption  papers 
to  prove  his  physical  unfitness  for  military  ser- 
vice. The  Salvationists  are  taking  care  to 
purge  themselves  of  any  suspicion  that  poten- 
tial slackers  have  joined  their  ranks  in  order  to 
avoid  the  possibility  of  having  to  perform  duties 
in  khaki. 

Among  oflScers  as  well  as  among  enlisted  men 
one  occasionally  hears  criticism — which  may  or 
may  not  be  based  on  a  fair  judgment — for 
certain  branches  of  certain  activities  of  certain 
organisations.  But  I  have  yet  to  meet  any 
soldier,  whether  a  brigadier  or  a  private, 
who,  if  he  spoke  at  all  of  the  Salvation 
Army,  did  not  speak  in  terms  of  fervent 
gratitude  for  the  aid  that  the  Salvationists 
are  rendering  so  unostentatiously  and  yet  so 
very  effectively.  Let  a  sizable  body  of  troops 
move  from  one  station  to  another,  and  hard  on 
its  heels  there  came  a  squad  of  men  and  women 
of  the  Salvation  Army.  An  army  truck  may 
bring  them,  or  it  may  be  they  have  a  battered 
jitney  to  move  them  and  their  scanty  outfits. 
Usually  they  do  not  ask  for  help  from  any  one 
in  reaching  their  destinations.  They  find  lodg- 
ment in  a  wrecked  shell  of  a  house  or  in  the 
corner  of  a  barn.  By  main  force  and  awkward- 
ness they  set  up  their  equipment,  and  very 
soon  the  word  has  spread  among  the  troopers 

[260] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

that  at  such-and-such  a  place  the  Salvation 
Army  is  serving  free  hot  drinks  and  free  dough- 
nuts and  free  pies.  It  specialises  in  doughnuts, 
the  Salvation  Army  in  the  field  does — the  real 
old-fashioned  homemade  ones  that  taste  of 
home  to  a  homesick  soldier  boy. 

I  did  not  see  this,  but  one  of  my  associates 
did.  He  saw  it  last  winter  in  a  dismal  place 
on  the  Toul  sector.  A  file  of  our  troops  were 
finishing  a  long  hike  through  rain  and  snow 
over  roads  knee-deep  in  half -thawed  icy  slush. 
Cold  and  wet  and  miserable,  they  came  tramp- 
ing into  a  cheerless,  half -empty  town  within 
sound  and  range  of  the  German  guns.  They 
found  a  reception  committee  awaiting  them 
there — in  the  person  of  two  Salvation  Army 
lassies  and  a  Salvation  Army  captain.  The 
women  had  a  fire  going  in  the  dilapidated  oven 
of  a  vanished  villager's  kitchen.  One  of  them 
was  rolling  out  the  batter  on  a  plank  with  an 
old  wine  bottle  for  a  rolling  pin  and  using  the 
top  of  a  tin  can  to  cut  the  dough  into  circular 
strips.  The  other  woman  was  cooking  the 
doughnuts,  and  as  fast  as  they  were  cooked  the 
man  served  them  out,  spitting  hot,  to  hungry 
wet  boys  clamouring  about  the  door,  and  nobody 
was  asked  to  pay  a  cent. 

At  the  risk  of  giving  mortal  affront  to  ultra- 
doctrinal  practitioners  of  applied  theology  I 
am  firmly  committed  to  the  belief  that  by  the 
grace  of  God  and  the  grease  of  doughnuts 
those    three    humble    benefactors    that    day 

[261  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

strengthened    their    right    to    a    place    in    the 
Heavenly  Kingdom. 

As  I  said  a  bit  ago,  there  is  in  France  room 
and  to  spare  and  the  heartiest  sort  of  wel- 
come for  competent,  sincere  lay  workers,  both 
men  and  women.  But  there  is  no  room, 
and  if  truth  be  known,  there  is  no  welcome  for 
any  other  sort.  These  people  over  here  long 
ago  passed  out  of  the  experimental  period  in 
the  handling  of  industrial  and  special  problems 
that  have  grown  up  out  of  war.  They  have 
entirely  emerged  from  the  amateur  stage  of 
endeavour  and  direction.  If  any  man  doubts 
the  truth  of  this  he  has  only  to  see,  as  I  have 
seen,  the  thousands  of  women  who  have  taken 
men's  jobs  in  the  cities  in  order  that  the  men 
might  go  to  the  colours;  has  only  to  see  the 
overalled  women  in  the  big  munition  plants; 
has  only  to  see  how  the  peasant  women  of 
France  are  labouring  in  the  fields  and  how  the 
girls  of  the  British  auxiliary  legions — the  mem- 
bers of  the  W.  A.  A.  C.  for  a  conspicuous 
example — are  carrying  their  share  of  the  burden; 
has  only  to  see  women  of  high  degree  and  low, 
each  doing  her  part  sanely,  systematically  and 
unflinchingly — to  appreciate  that,  though  Brit- 
ain and  France  can  find  employment  for 
every  pair  of  willing  and  able  hands  some- 
where behind  the  lines,  they  have  no  use 
whatsoever  for  the  unorganised  applicant  or  for 
the  purely  ornamental  variety  of  volunteer  or 
yet  for  the  mere  notoriety  seeker. 

[262] 


wanted:  a  fool-proof  war 

I  make  so  bold  as  to  suggest  that  it  is  time 
we  were  taking  the  same  lesson  to  heart; 
time  to  start  the  sifting  process  ourselves.  I 
have  seen  in  Paris  a  considerable  number  of 
American  women  who  appeared  to  have  no 
business  here  except  to  air  their  most  becoming 
uniforms  in  public  places  and  to  tell  in  a  vague 
broad  way  of  the  things  they  hope  to  do.  The 
French,  proverbially,  are  a  polite  race,  and 
the  French  Government  will  endure  a  great 
deal  of  this  kind  of  infliction  rather  than  run 
the  risk  of  engendering  friction,  even  to  the 
most  minute  extent,  with  the,  people  or  the 
administration  of  an  Allied  nation.  But  in 
wartime  especially,  too  much  patience  becomes  a 
dubious  virtue,  and  if  practiced  for  overlong 
may  become  a  fault. 

As  yet  there  has  been  no  intimation  from  any 
official  source  that  the  French  would  rather  our 
State  Department  did  not  issue  quite  so  many 
passports  to  Americans  who  have  no  set  and 
definite  purpose  in  making  the  journey  to 
these  shores,  but  even  a  superficial  knowledge 
of  the  French  language  and  the  most  casual 
acquaintance  with  the  French  nature  enable 
one  to  get  at  what  the  French  people  are  think- 
ing. I  am  sure  that  had  the  prevalent  con- 
dition been  reversed  our  papers  would  have 
voiced  the  popular  protest  at  the  imposi- 
tion long  before  now.  Some  of  these  days, 
unless  we  apply  the  preventive  measures  on 
our   own   side  of  the  Atlantic,   the   perfectly 

[  263  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

justifiable  resentment  of  the  hard-pressed 
French  is  going  to  find  utterance;  and  then 
quite  a  number  of  well-intentioned  but  utterly 
inutile  persons  will  be  going  back  home  with 
their  feelings  all  harrowed  up. 


[264] 


CHAPTER  XVI 
CONDUCTING  WAR  BY  DELEGATION 


PLEASE  do  not  think  that  because  I  have 
mainly  dwelt  thus  far  upon  the  women 
offenders  that  there  are  no  American 
men  in  France  who  do  not  belong  here, 
because  that  would  be  a  wrong  assumption.  I 
merely  have  mentioned  the  women  first  because 
by  reason  of  their  military  garbing — or  what 
some  of  them  fondly  mistake  for  military 
garbing — they  offer  rather  more  conspicuous 
showing  to  the  casual  eye  than  the  male  civilian 
dress. 

The  men  are  abundantly  on  hand  though; 
make  no  mistake  about  that!  Some  of  them 
come  burdened  with  frock-coated  dignity  as 
members  of  special  commissions  or  special 
delegations;  in  certain  quarters  there  appears 
to  be  a  somewhat  hazy  but  very  lively  inclina- 
tion to  try  to  run  our  share  of  this  war  by 
commission.  Some,  I  am  sure,  came  for  the 
same  reason  that  the  young  man  in  the  limerick 
went  to  the  stranger's  funeral — because  they 
are  fond  of  a  ride.     Some  I  think  came  in  the 

[265] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

hope  of  enjoying  an  exciting  sort  of  junketing 
expedition,  and  some  because  they  were  all 
dressed  up  and  had  nowhere  to  go. 

As  well  as  may  be  judged  by  one  who  has 
been  away  from  home  for  going  on  five  months 
now,  the  special-commission  notion  is  being 
rather  overdone.  Individuals  and  groups  of 
individuals  bearing  credentials  from  this  fra- 
ternal organisation  or  that  religious  organisa- 
tion or  the  other  research  society  reach  England 
on  nearly  every  steamer  that  penetrates  through 
the  U-boat  zone.  Almost  invariably  these 
gentlemen  carry  letters  of  introduction  testi- 
fying to  their  personal  probity  and  their  col- 
lective importance,  which  letters  are  signed  by 
persons  sitting  in  high  places. 

It  may  be  that  the  English  are  thereby 
deceived  into  believing  that  the  visitors  are 
entitled  to  special  consideration — as  indeed 
some  of  them  are,  and  indeed  some  of 
them  most  distinctly  are  not.  Or  then 
again  it  may  be  that  the  English  are  not 
aware  of  a  device  very  common  among  our 
men  of  affairs  for  getting  rid  of  a  bore  who  is 
intent  on  going  somewhere  to  see  somebody 
and  craves  to  be  properly  vouched  for  upon 
his  arrival.  In  certain  circles  this  habit  is  called 
passing  the  buck.  In  others  it  is  known  as 
writing  letters  of  introduction. 

At  any  rate  the  English  take  no  chances  on 
offending  the  right  party,  even  at  the  risk  of 
favouring  the  wrong  one.     When  a  half  dozen 

[266] 


CONDUCTING    WAR    BY    DELEGATION 

Yankees  appear  at  the  Foreign  Office  laden  with 
letters  addressed  "To  Whom  it  May  Concern" 
the  Foreign  Office  immediately  becomes  con- 
cerned. 

How  is  a  guileless  Britisher  intrenched 
behind  a  flat-top  desk  to  know  that  the  August 
and  Imperial  Order  of  Supreme  Potentates 
whose  chosen  emissaries  are  now  present  desirous 
of  having  a  look  at  the  war,  and  afterward  to 
approve  of  it  in  a  report  to  the  Grand  Lodge  at 
its  next  annual  convention,  if  so  be  they  do  see 
fit  to  approve  of  it — how,  I  repeat,  is  he  to  know 
that  the  August  and  Imperial  Order  of  Supreme 
Potentates  has  a  membership  largely  composed 
of  class-C  bartenders?  Not  knowing,  he  acts 
in  accordance  with  the  best  dictates  of  his 
ignorance. 

The  commission  or  the  delegation  or  the 
presentation,  whatever  it  calls  itself,  is  pro- 
vided with  White  Passes  all  round.  On  the 
strength  of  these  White  Passes  the  investi- 
gators are  at  the  public  expense  transferred 
across  the  Channel  and  housed  temporarily  at 
the  American  Visitors'  Chateau.  From  there 
they  are  taken  in  automobiles  and  under 
escort  of  very  bored  officers  on  a  kind  of  glori- 
fied Cook's  tour  behind  the  British  Front. 
Thereafter  they  are  turned  over  to  the  French 
Mission  or  to  the  American  forces  for  similar 
treatment. 

As  a  result  they  accumulate  an  assortment  of 
soft-boiled  and  yolkless  impressions  which  they 

[267] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

incubate  into  the  spoken  or  the  written  word 
on  the  way  back  home,  after  they  have  held  a 
meeting  to  decide  whether  they  hke  the  way  the 
war  is  going  on  or  whether  they  do  not  like 
the  way  the  war  is  going  on.  Always  there  is 
the  possibility  that  as  a  result  of  the  dissemina- 
tion of  underdone  and  undigested  misinforma- 
tions which  they  have  managed  to  acquire  these 
persons,  though  actuated  by  the  best  intentions 
in  the  world,  may  do  considerable  harm  in 
shaping  public  opinion  in  America.  And  like- 
wise one  may  be  very  sure  a  lot  of  pestered 
British  and  French  functionaries  are  left  to 
wonder  what  sort  of  folks  the  masses  of  Ameri- 
can citizenship  must  be  if  these  are  typical 
samples  of  the  thought-moulding  class. 

I  am  not  exaggerating  much  when  I  touch  on 
this  particular  phase  of  the  topic  now  engaging 
me,  for  I  have  seen  two  delegations  in  Europe 
of  the  variety  I  have  sought  briefly  to  describe 
in  the  lines  immediately  foregoing;  and  we  are 
expecting  more  in  on  the  next  boat.  There  was 
no  imaginable  reason  why  those  whom  I  saw 
should  be  in  a  country  that  is  at  war  at  such  a 
time  of  crisis  as  this  time  is,  but  the  main  point 
was  that  they  were  here,  eating  three  large 
rectangular  meals  a  day  apiece  and  taking  up 
the  valuable  time  of  overworked  military  men 
who  accompanied  them  while  they  week-ended 
at  the  war.  How  many  more  such  delegations 
will  sift  through  the  State  Department  and 
seep    by    the    passport    bureau    and    journey 

[268] 


CONDUCTING    WAR    BY    DELEGATION 

hither  during  the  latter  half  of  1918  unless 
the  Administration  at  Washington  shuts  down 
on  the  game  no  man  can  with  accuracy  calculate. 

Away  down  in  the  south  of  France  I  ran 
into  a  gentleman  of  a  clerical  aspect  who  lost 
no  time  in  telling  me  about  himself.  He  was 
tall  and  slender  like  a  wand,  and  of  a  willowy 
suppleness  of  figure,  and  he  was  terribly  serious 
touching  on  his  mission.  He  represented  a 
religious  denomination  that  has  several  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  communicants  in  the 
United  States.  He  had  been  dispatched  acros*^, 
he  said,  by  the  governing  body  of  his  church. 
His  purpose,  he  explained,  was  to  inquire  into 
the  bodily  and  spiritual  well-being  of  his 
coreligionists  who  were  on  foreign  service  in 
the  Army  and  the  Navy,  with  a  view  subse- 
quently to  suggesting  reforms  for  any  existing 
evil  in  the  military  and  naval  systems  when  he 
reported  back  to  the  main  board  of  his  church. 

To  an  innocent  bystander  it  appeared  that 
this  particular  investigator  had  a  considerable 
contract  upon  his  hands.  Scattered  over  land 
and  sea  on  this  hemisphere  there  must  be  a 
good  many  thousands  of  members  of  his  faith 
who  are  wearing  the  khaki  or  the  marine  blue. 
It  would  be  practically  impossible,  I  figured,  to 
recognise  them  in  their  uniforms  for  what, 
denominationally  speaking,  they  were;  and 
from  what  I  had  seen  of  our  operations  I 
doubted  whether  any  commanding  officer  would 
be  willing  to  suspend  routine  while  the  reverend 

[269] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

tabulator  went  down  the  lines  taking  his  census ; 
besides,  the  latter  process  would  invariably 
consume  considerable  time.  I  calculated  off- 
hand that  if  the  war  lasted  three  years  longer  it 
still  would  be  over  before  he  could  complete 
his  rounds  of  all  the  camps  and  all  the  ships 
and  all  the  rest  billets  and  bases  and  hospitals 
and  lines  of  communication,  and  so  on.  So  I 
ventured  to  ask  him  just  how  he  meant  to  go 
about  getting  his  compilations  of  testimony 
together. 

He  told  me  blandly  that  as  yet  he  had  not 
fully  worked  out  that  detail  of  the  task.  For 
the  time  being  he  would  content  himself  with  a 
general  survey  of  the  situation  and  with  securing 
material  for  a  lecture  which  he  thought  of 
giving  upon  his  return  to  America. 

I  felt  a  strong  inclination  to  speak  to  him 
after  some  such  fashion  as  this: 

"My  dear  sir,  if  I  were  you  I  would  not 
greatly  concern  myself  regarding  the  physical 
and  the  moral  states  of  individuals  composing 
our  Expeditionary  Forces.  That  job  is  already 
being  competently  attended  to  by  experts. 
So  far  as  my  own  observations  go  the  chaplains 
are  all  conscientious,  hard-working  men.  There 
are  a  large  number  of  excellent  and  experienced 
chaplains  over  here — enough,  in  fact,  to  go 
round.  They  are  doing  everything  that  is 
humanly  possible  to  be  done  to  keep  the  men 
happy  and  amused  in  their  leisure  hours  and  to 
help   them   to   continue   to   be   decent,    clean- 

[270] 


CONDUCTING    WAR    BY    DELEGATION 

minded,  normal  human  beings.  Almost  with- 
out exception,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge  and 
belief,  the  officers  are  practically  lending  their 
personal  influence  and  using  the  power  and  the 
weight  of  discipline  to  accomplish  the  same 
desirable  ends. 

*'0n  the  phj^sical  side  our  boys  are  in  splendid 
condition.  We  may  have  bogged  slightly  down 
in  some  of  the  aspects  of  this  vmdertaking,  but 
there  is  plenty  of  healthful  and  nourishing  food 
on  hand  for  every  American  boy  in  foreign 
service.  He  is  comfortably  clothed  and  com- 
fortably shod — his  officers  see  to  that;  and  he  is 
housed  in  as  comfortable  a  billet  as  it  is  possible 
to  provide,  the  state  of  the  country  being  what 
it  is.  While  he  is  well  and  hearty  he  has  his 
fill  of  victuals  three  times  a  day,  and  if  he  falls 
ill,  is  wounded  or  hurt  he  has  as  good  medical 
attendance  and  as  good  nursing  and  as  good 
hospital  treatment  as  it  is  possible  for  our 
country  to  provide. 

''Touching  on  the  other  side  of  the  proposition 
I  would  say  this:  In  England,  where  there  are 
powerfully  few  dry  areas,  and  here  in  France, 
which  is  a  country  where  everybody  drinks 
wine,  I  have  seen  a  great  many  thousands  of 
our  enlisted  men — soldiers,  sailors  and  marines, 
engineers  and  members  of  battalions.  I  have 
seen  them  in  all  sorts  of  surroundings  and  under 
all  sorts  of  circumstances.  I  have  seen  perhaps 
twenty  who  were  slightly  under  the  influence  of 
alcohohc  stimulant.     As  a  sinner  would  put  it, 

[271] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

they  were  slightly  jingled — not  disorderly,  not 
staggering,  you  understand,  but  somewhat 
jingled.  I  have  yet  to  see  one  in  such  a  state 
as  the  strictest  police-court  magistrate  would 
call  a  state  of  outright  intoxication.  That  has 
been  my  experience.  I  may  add  that  it  has 
been  the  common  experience  of  the  men  of  my 
profession  who  have  had  similar  opportunities 
for  observing  the  conduct  of  our  fellows 

"It  is  true  that  the  boys  indulge  in  a  good 
deal  of  miscellaneous  cussing — which  is  deplor- 
able, of  course,  and  highly  reprehensible.  Still, 
in  my  humble  opinion  most  of  them  use  pro- 
fanity as  a  matter  of  habit  and  not  because 
there  is  any  real  lewdness  or  any  real  viciousness 
in  their  hearts.  Mainly  they  cuss  for  the  same 
reason  that  a  parrot  does.  Anyhow,  I  could 
hardly  blame  a  fellow  sufiFerer  for  swearing 
occasionally,  considering  the  kind  of  spring 
weather  we  have  been  having  in  these  parts 
lately. 

"As  for  their  morals,  I  am  firmly  committed 
to  the  belief,  as  a  result  of  what  I  have  seen 
and  heard,  that  man  for  man  our  soldiers  have 
a  higher  moral  standard  than  the  men  of  any 
army  of  any  other  nation  engaged  in  this  war; 
and  when  in  this  connection  I  speak  of  our 
soldiers  I  mean  the  soldiers  of  Canada  as  well 
as  the  soldiers  of  the  United  States.  Any  man 
who  tells  you  the  contrary  is  a  liar,  and  the 
truth  is  not  in  him.  This  is  not  an  offhand 
alibi;  statistics  compiled  by  our  own  surgeons 

[272] 


CONDUCTING    WAR    BY    DELEGATION 

form  the  truth  of  it;  and  any  man  who  stands 
up  anywhere  on  our  continent  and  says  that 
the  soldiers  who  have  come  from  our  side  of  the 
Atlantic  to  help  lick  Germany  are  contracting 
habits  of  drunkenness  or  that  they  are  being 
ruined  by  the  spreading  of  sexual  diseases  among 
them  utters  a  deliberate  and  a  cruel  slander 
against  North  American  manhood  which  should 
entitle  him  to  a  suit  of  tar-and-feather  under- 
wear and  a  free  ride  on  a  rail  out  of  any 
community. 

"There  is  absolutely  nothing  the  matter 
with  our  boys  except  that  they  are  average 
human  beings,  and  it  is  going  to  take  a  long 
time  to  cure  them  of  that.  And  please  remem- 
ber this — that,  discipline  being  what  it  is  and 
military  restraint  being  what  it  is,  it  is  very 
much  harder  for  a  man  in  the  Army  or  the  Navy 
to  get  drunk  or  to  misconduct  himself  than  it 
would  be  for  him  to  indulge  in  such  excesses 
were  he  out  in  civil  life,  as  a  free  agent. " 

That  in  fact  was  what  I  wanted  to  pour  into 
the  ear  of  the  ecclesiastical  prober.  But  I  did 
not.  I  saved  it  up  to  say  it  here,  where  it 
would  enjoy  a  wider  circulation.  I  left  him 
engaged  in  generally  surveying. 

Officers  and  men  alike  are  invariably  ready 
and  willing  to  voice  their  gratitude  and  their 
everlasting  appreciation  of  the  help  and  com- 
fort provided  by  those  who  are  attached  to  lay 
organisations  having  for  the  time  being  a  more 
or  less  miUtary  complexion;  they  are  equally 

[273] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

ready  to  score  the  incompetents  who  infre- 
quently turn  up  in  these  auxiliary  branches  of 
the  service.  A  man  who  is  fighting  Fritz  is  apt 
to  have  a  short  temper  anyhow,  and  meddle- 
some busybodies  who  want  to  aid  without 
knowing  any  of  the  rudiments  make  him  see 
red  and  swear  blue. 

A  general  of  division  told  me  that  when  he 
moved  in  with  his  command  to  the  sector 
which  he  then  was  occupying  he  was  tagged 
by  an  undoubtedly  earnest  but  undeniably 
pestiferous  person  who  wanted  everything  else 
suspended  until  his  purposes  in  accompanying 
the  expedition  had  been  satisfied. 

"I  was  a  fairly  busy  person  along  about 
then,"  said  the  general.  "We  were  within 
reach  of  the  enemy's  big  guns  and  his  aero- 
planes were  giving  us  considerable  bother,  and 
what  with  getting  a  sufl5ciency  of  dugouts  and 
trench  shelters  provided  for  the  troops  and 
attending  to  about  a  million  other  things  of 
more  or  less  importance  from  a  military  stand- 
point I  had  mighty  little  time  to  spare  for  side 
issues;  and  my  officers  had  less. 

"But  the  person  I  am  speaking  of  kept  after 
me  constantly.  His  idea  was  that  the  men 
needed  recreation  and  needed  it  forthwith.  He 
was  there  to  provide  this  recreation  without 
delay,  and  he  couldn't  understand  why  there 
should  be  any  delay  in  attending  to  his  wishes. 

"Finally,  to  get  rid  of  him,  I  gave  orders  that 
a  noncommissioned  officer  and  a  squad  of  men 

[  274  ] 


CONDUCTING    WAR    BY    DELEGATION 

should  be  taken  away  from  whatever  else  they 
were  doing  and  told  off  to  aid  our  self-appointed 
amusement  director  in  doing  whatever  it  was 
he  wanted  done.  It  was  the  only  way  short  of 
putting  him  under  arrest  that  would  relieve  me 
of  a  common  nuisance  and  leave  my  staff  free 
to  do  their  jobs. 

"Well,  it  seemed  that  the  young  man  had 
brought  along  with  him  a  tent  and  a  moving- 
picture  outfit  and  a  supply  of  knockdown  seats. 
Under  his  direction  the  detail  of  men  set  up  the 
tent  on  an  open  site  which  he  selected  upon  the 
very  top  of  a  little  hill,  where  it  stood  out  against 
the  sky  line  like  a  target;  which,  in  a  way  of 
speaking,  .was  exactly  what  it  was.  Then  he 
installed  his  moving-picture  machine  and  ranged 
his  chairs  in  rows  and  announced  that  that 
evening  there  would  be  a  free  show.  I  may  add 
that  I  knew  nothing  of  this  at  the  time,  and 
inasmuch  as  the  recreation  man  was  known  to 
be  acting  by  my  authority  with  a  free  hand  no 
officer  felt  called  upon  to  interfere,  I  suppose. 

"The  show  started  promptly  on  time,  with 
a  large  and  enthusiastic  audience  of  enlisted 
men  on  hand  and  with  the  tent  all  lit  up  inside. 
In  the  midst  of  the  darkness  roundabout  it 
must  have  loomed  up  like  a  lighthouse.  Natu- 
rally there  were  immediate  consequences. 

"Before  the  first  reel  was  halfway  unrolled 
a  boche  flying  man  came  sailing  over,  with  the 
notion  of  making  us  unhappy  in  our  under- 
ground   shelters    if    he    could.     He    found    a 

[275] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

shining  mark  waiting  for  him,  so  dropped  a 
bomb  at  that  tent.  Luckily  the  bomb  missed 
the  tent,  but  it  struck  alongside  of  it  and  the 
concussion  blew  the  canvas  flat.  The  men 
came  out  from  under  the  flattened  folds  and 
stampeded  for  the  dugouts,  wrecking  the 
moving-picture  machine  in  their  flight.  And 
the  next  day  we  were  shy  one  amusement 
director.     He  had  gone  away  from  there. " 

In  the  Army  itself  there  are  exceedingly  few 
members  of  the  Bejones  of  Tuxedo  family,  and 
this,  I  take  it,  is  a  striking  evidence  of  the 
average  high  intelligence  of  the  men  who  have 
been  chosen  to  officer  our  forces,  considering 
that  we  started  at  scratch  to  mould  millions 
of  civilians  into  soldiers  and  considering  also 
how  necessary  it  was  at  the  outset  to  issue  a 
great  number  of  commissions  overnight,  as  it 
were.  Howsomever,  now  and  again  a  curious 
ornithological  specimen  does  bob  up,  wearing 
shoulder  straps. 

A  party  of  civilians,  observers,  were  sent  to 
France  by  a  friendly  power  to  have  a  look  at 
our  troops.  When  they  reached  General  Head- 
quarters they  were  being  escorted  by  a  beard- 
less youth  with  the  bars  of  a  second  lieutenant 
on  his  coat.  He  also  wore  two  bracelets,  one 
of  gold  and  one  of  silver,  on  his  right  wrist. 
He  also  spoke  with  a  fascinating  lisp.  He  went 
straight  to  the  office  of  the  officer  commanding 
the  Intelligence  Section. 

"Colonel,"  he  says,  "I  regard  it  as  a  great 

[276] 


CONDUCTING    WAR    BY    DELEGATION 

mistake  to  send  me  out  here  with  this  party. 
My  work  is  really  in  Paris. " 

"Well,"  said  the  colonel,  "you  let  Paris 
worry  along  without  you  as  best  it  can  while 
you  toddle  along  and  accompany  these  visiting 
gentlemen  over  such-and-such  a  sector.  Oh, 
yes,  there  is  one  other  thing:  Kindly  close  the 
door  behind  you  on  your  way  out." 

The  braceleted  one  hid  his  petulance  behind 
a  salute,  his  jewelry  meanwhile  jingling  pleas- 
antly, and  withdrew  from  the  presence.  For 
two  days  in  an  automobile  he  toured  with  his 
charge,  at  a  safe  distance  behind  the  front  lines. 
On  the  evening  of  the  second  day,  when  they 
reached  the  railroad  station  to  await  the  train 
which  would  carry  them  back  to  Paris,  he  was 
heard  to  remark  with  a  heartfelt  but  lispy  sigh 
of  relief:  "Well,  thank  heaven  for  one  thing 
anyhow — I  have  done  my  bit!" 

Without  being  in  possession  of  the  exact 
facts  I  nevertheless  hazard  the  guess  that  this 
young  person  either  has  been  sent  or  shortly 
will  be  going  back  to  his  native  land.  Weeding- 
out  is  one  of  the  best  things  this  Army  of  our 
does.  It  would  be  well,  in  my  humble  judg- 
ment, if  folks  at  home  followed  the  Army's 
example  in  this  regard,  but  conducted  the  weed- 
ing-out  process  over  there. 

For  men  and  women  who  can  be  of  real 
service,  who  can  endure  hardships  without  col- 
lapsing and  without  complaining,  who  can  fend 
for  themselves  when  emergencies  arise,  who  are 

[277] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

self-reliant,  competent,  well  skilled  in  their 
vocations,  there  is  need  here  in  France  in  the 
Red  Cross,  in  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  in  the  Y.  M.  H.  A., 
in  the  K.  of  C,  in  the  hospitals,  in  the  telephone 
exchanges,  the  motor  service,  the  ambulance 
service  and  in  scores  of  other  fields  of  depart- 
mental and  allied  activity.  If  these  persons 
can  speak  a  little  French,  so  much  the  better. 

But  for  the  camouflaged  malingerer,  for  the 
potential  slacker,  for  the  patriotic  but  un- 
qualified zealot,  for  the  incompetent  one  who 
mistakes  enthusiasm  for  ability,  and  for  the 
futile  commission  member  there  is  no  room 
whatsoever.  This  job  of  knocking  the  mania 
out  of  Germania  is  a  big  job,  and  the  closer  one 
gets  to  it  the  bigger  it  appears.  We  can't  make 
it  absolutely  a  fool-proof  war,  but  by  a  proper 
discrimination  exercised  at  home  we  can  reduce 
the  number  of  Americans  in  Europe  for  whose 
presence  here  there  appears  to  be  no  valid 
excuse  whatsoever. 

P.  S.  I  hope  they  read  these  few  lines  in 
Washington. 


[278] 


CHAPTER  XVII 
YOUNG  BLACK  JOE 


YOU  rode  along  a  highroad  that  was 
built  wide  and  ran  straight,  miles  on, 
and  through  a  birch  forest  that  was 
very  dense  and  yet  somehow  very 
orderly,  as  is  the  way  with  French  highroads, 
and  with  French  forests,  too,  and  after  a  while 
you  came  to  where  the  woods  frazzled  away 
from  close-ranked  white  trunks  into  a  fringing 
of  lacy  undergrowth,  all  giddy  and  all  gaudy 
with  wild  flowers  of  many  a  colour. 

Here,  in  a  narrow  clearing  that  traversed 
the  thickets  at  right  angles  to  the  course  you 
had  been  following,  there  disclosed  himself 
a  high-garbed  North  American  mule,  a  little 
bit  under  weight,  so  that  his  backbone  stood  out 
sharply  like  the  ridgepole  of  a  roof  pitched 
steep,  with  hollows  by  his  hip  joints  to  catch 
the  rain  water  in.  Viewing  him  astern  or  on  the 
quarter  you  discerned  that  his  prevalent  archi- 
tecture, though  mixed,  inclined  to  the  mansard 
type.  Viewing  him  bow-on  you  observed  that 
he  wore  a  gas  mask  upon  his  high  and  narrow 

[279] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

temples  and  that  from  beneath  this  adornment, 
which  would  be  startling  elsewhere  but  which 
at  the  Front  is  both  commonplace  and  cus- 
tomary, he  contemplated  the  immediate  fore- 
ground with  half-closed,  indolent  eyes  and 
altogether  was  as  much  at  home  as  though 
his  chin  rested  upon  the  hickory  top  rider  of  a 
snake  fence  in  his  native  Ozarks  instead  of 
resting,  as  it  did,  athwart  the  crosspiece  of  a 
low  signpost  reading:  "Danger  Beyond — ^All 
Cars  Halt  Here!     Proceed  Afoot!" 

You  might  be  sure  that  never  did  any  mule 
born  in  Missouri  take  his  languid  ease  amid 
surroundings  more  unique  for  a  mule  to  be  in, 
inside  or  outside  of  that  sovereign  common- 
wealth. There  was,  to  begin  with,  his  gas  mask, 
draped  upon  the  spindled  brow  and  ready,  on 
warning,  to  be  yanked  down  over  the  muzzle 
and  latched  fast  beneath  the  throat;  probably 
as  a  veteran  mule  he  was  used  to  that.  But 
there  were  other  things:  High-velocity  shells 
from  a  battery  of  six-inches  somewhere  in  the 
woods  to  the  west  were  going  over  his  head  at 
regular  half-minute  intervals,  each  in  its  pas- 
sage making  a  sound  as  though  everybody  on 
earth  in  chorus  had  said  "Whew-w-w-!" — like 
that.  Merely  by  cocking  an  eyelid  aloft  he 
could  have  beheld,  sundry  thousands  of  feet 
up,  three  French  combat  planes  hunting  a 
German  raider  back  to  his  own  lines,  the 
French  motors  humming  steadily  like  honey- 
bees but  the  German  droning  to  a  deeper  note 

[  280] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


with  sullen  heavy  rift  tones  breaking  into  its 
cadences,  for  all  the  world  like  one  of  those  big 
noisy  beetles  that  invade  your  bedchamber  on 
a  hot  night.  Merely  by  squinting  straight 
ahead  he  could  have  seen  at  the  farther  edge 
of  the  little  glade  a  triple  row  of  white  crosses, 
each  set  off  by  the  wooden  rosette  device  in  red, 
white  and  blue  with  which  the  French,  when 
given  time,  mark  the  graves  of  their  fallen 
fighters.  Merely  by  sniffing  he  could  have 
caught  from  a  mile  distant  the  faint  but  un- 
mistakable reek  that  hangs  over  battlefields 
when  they  are  getting  to  be  old  battlefields  but 
are  not  yet  very  old,  and  that  nearly  always 
distresses  green  work  animals  at  the  first  time  of 
taking  it  into  their  nostrils.  None  of  these 
things  he  did  though,  but  remained  content 
and  motionless  save  for  his  wagging  ears  and 
his  switching  tail  and  his  uneasy  lower  lip. 
He  was  just  standing  there,  letting  the  hot 
sunshine  seep  into  him  through  all  his  pores. 

Otherwise,  however,  his  more  adjacent  set- 
tings were  in  a  manner  of  speaking  conventional 
and  according  to  mules.  For  he  was  attached  by 
virtue  of  an  improvised  gear  of  wire  ropes  and 
worn  leather  breeching  to  a  small  flat  car  that 
bestraddled  a  rusty  railroad  track;  and  at  his 
head  stood  a  ginger-coloured  youth  of  twenty 
years  or  thereabouts.  In  our  own  land  you 
somehow  expect,  when  you  find  a  mule  engaged 
in  industry,  to  find  an  American  of  African 
antecedents  managing  him.     So  the  combina- 

[281  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

tion  was  in  keeping  with  the  popular  conception. 
Only  in  this  instance  the  attendant  youth  wore 
part  of  a  uniform  and  had  a  steel  shrapnel  hel- 
met clamped  down  upon  his  skull. 

Said  youth  caught  a  nod  from  a  corporal  of  his 
own  race  who  lounged  against  a  broken  wall, 
the  wall  being  practically  all  that  remained  of 
what  once  had  been  the  home  of  a  crossings 
guard  alongside  a  railroad  that  was  a  real 
railroad  no  longer;  and  at  that  he  climbed 
nimbly  on  muleback. 

He  gathered  up  the  guiding  strings,  and  this 
then  was  the  starting  signal  he  gave  as  he 
showed  all  his  teeth — he  seemed  to  have  fifty 
teeth  at  least — in  a  gorgeous  and  friendly  grin: 
"All  abo'd  fur  the  Fifty -nint'  Street  crosstown 
line!" 

By  that  you  would  have  known,  if  you 
knew  your  New  York  at  all,  that  this  particular 
muleteer  must  hail  from  that  nook  of  Li'l  Ole 
Manhattan  which  since  the  days  of  the  Yanko- 
Spanko  war,  when  a  certain  group  of  black 
troopers  did  a  certain  valiant  thing,  has  been 
called  San  Juan  Hill,  and  that  away  off  here 
where  now  he  was,  in  the  back  edges  of  France, 
he  had  in  his  own  mind  at  the  moment  a  picture 
of  West  Fifty-ninth  Street  as  it  might  look — 
and  probably  would — on  this  bright  warm  after- 
noon, stretching  as  a  narrow  band,  biaswise, 
of  the  town  from  the  Black  Belt  on  the  West 
Side  with  its  abutting  chop-suey  parlours  and 
its  fragrant  barber  shops  and  its  clubrooms  for 

[282  ] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


head  and  side  waiters,  on  past  Columbus 
Circle  into  the  lighter  coloured  districts  to  the 
eastward;  and  likewise  that  since  he  did  have 
the  image  in  his  mind  he  perhaps  grinned  his 
toothful  grin  to  hide  a  pang  of  homesickness 
for  the  place  where  he  belonged. 

I  figured  that  I  knew  these  things,  who  had 
journeyed  by  motor  with  two  more  for  a  hundred 
and  eighty  miles  across  country  to  pay  a  visit  to 
the  first  sector  in  our  front  lines  that  had  been 
taken  over  by  a  regiment  of  negro  volunteers — 
now  by  reason  of  departmental  classifyings 
known  as  the  Three  Hundred  and  Somethingth 
of  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces.  Be- 
cause New  York  was  where  I  also  belonged,  and 
this  genial  postilion  was  of  a  breed  made  familiar 
to  me  long  time  ago  in  surroundings  vastly 
dissimilar  to  these  present  ones. 

To  the  three  of  us  word  had  come,  no  matter 
how,  that  negro  troops  of  ours  were  in  the  line. 
No  authoritative  announcement  to  that  effect 
having  been  forthcoming,  we  were  at  the  first 
hearing  of  the  news  skeptical.  To  be  sure  the 
big  movement  overseas  was  at  last  definitely 
and  audaciously  under  way;  the  current  month's 
programme  called  for  the  landing  on  French  soil 
of  two  hundred  thousand  Americans  of  fighting 
age  and  fighting  dispositions,  which  contract,  I 
might  add,  was  carried  out  so  thoroughly  that 
not  only  the  promised  two  hundred  thousand 
but  a  good  and  heaping  measure  of  nearly  sixty 
thousand  more  on  top  of  that  arrived  before  the 

[  ^8S  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

thirtieth.  It  is  The  Glory  of  the  Coming  all 
right,  this  great  thing  that  has  happened  this 
summer  over  here,  and  I  am  glad  that  mine 
eyes  have  seen  it.  It  is  almost  the  finest  thing 
that  the  eye  of  an  American  of  this  generation 
has  yet  seen  or  is  likely  to  see  before  Germany 
herself  is  invaded. 

But  even  though  the  sea  lanes  were  streaky 
with  the  wakes  of  our  convoys  and  the  dis- 
embarkation ports  cluttered  with  our  transports, 
we  doubted  that  coloured  troops  were  as  yet 
facing  the  enemy  across  the  barbed-wire  boun- 
daries that  separate  him  from  us.  Possibly  this 
was  because  we  had  grown  accustomed  to  think- 
ing of  our  negroes  as  members  of  labour  battalions 
working  along  the  lines  of  communication — 
unloading  ships  and  putting  up  warehouses  and 
building  depots  and  felling  trees  in  the  forests 
of  France,  which  seem  doomed  to  fall  either 
through  shelling  or  by  the  axes  of  the  timbering 
crews  of  the  Allies. 

"You  must  be  wrong,"  we  said  to  him  who 
brought  us  the  report.  "You  must  have  seen 
an  unusually  big  lot  of.  negroes  going  up  to  work 
in  the  lumber  camps  in  the  woods  at  the  north. " 

"No  such  thing,"  he  said.  "I  tell  you  that 
we've  got  black  soldiers  on  the  job — at  least 
two  regiments  of  them.  There's  a  draft  regi- 
ment from  somewhere  down  South,  and  another 
regiment  from  one  of  the  Eastern  States — one  of 
the  old  National  Guard  outfits  I  think  it  is — 
about  fifteen  miles  to  the  east  of  the  first  lot. 

[284] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


Here,  I  can  show  you  about  where  they  are — 
if  anybody's  got  a  map  handy. " 

Everybody  had  a  map  handy.  A  corre- 
spondent no  more  thinks  of  moving  about  with- 
out a  map  than  he  thinks  of  moving  about 
without  a  gas  mask  and  a  white  paper,  which  is  a 
pass.  He  wouldn't  dare  move  without  the 
mask;  he  couldn't  move  far  without  the  pass,  and 
the  next  to  these  two  the  map  is  the  most 
needful  part  of  his  travelling  equipment. 

So  that  was  how  the  quest  started.  As  we 
came  nearer  to  the  somewhat  indefinitely 
located  spot  for  which  we  sought,  the  signs 
that  we  were  on  a  true  trail  multiplied,  in  bits  of 
evidence  offered  by  supply-train  drivers  who 
told  us  they  lately  had  met  negro  troopers  on 
the  march  in  considerable  number.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  there  were  then  four  black  regi- 
ments instead  of  two  taking  up  sector  positions 
in  our  plan  of  defence.  However,  that  fact  was 
to  develop  later  through  a  statement  put  forth 
with  the  approval  of  the  censor  at  General 
Headquarters. 

After  some  seven  hours  of  reasonably  swift 
travel  in  a  high-powered  car  we  had  left  behind 
the  more  peaceful  districts  back  of  the  debatable 
areas  and  were  entering  into  the  edges  of  a 
village  that  had  been  shot  to  bits  in  the  great 
offensive  of  1914,  which  afterward  had  been 
partially  rebuilt  and  which  lately  had  been 
abandoned  again,  after  the  great  offensive  of 
1918  started. 

[  285  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

Right  here  from  somewhere  in  the  impending 
clutter  of  nondescript  ruination  we  heard  many 
voices  singing  all  together.  The  song  was  a 
strange  enough  song  for  these  surroundings. 
Once  before  in  my  life  and  only  once  I  have 
heard  it,  and  that  was  five  years  ago  on  an 
island  off  the  coast  of  Georgia.  I  don't  think 
it  ever  had  a  name  and  the  author  of  it  had 
somehow  got  the  Crucifixion  and  the  Discovery 
of  America  confused  in  his  mind. 

We  halted  the  car  behind  the  damaged  wall  of 
an  abandoned  garden,  not  wishing  to  come  upon 
the  unseen  choristers  until  they  had  finished. 
Their  voices  rose  with  the  true  camp-meeting 
quaver,  giving  reverence  to  the  lines: 

In  FoHeen  Hunnerd  an  Ninety-one 
^Twuz  den  my  Saviour  s  work  begun. 

And  next  the  chorus,  long-drawn-out  and 
mournful : 

0/i,  dey  nailed  my  Saviour  ^pon  de  cross. 
But  he  never  spoke  a  mumblin  word. 

I  was  explaining  to  my  companions,  both  of 
them  Northern-born,  that  mumbling  in  the 
language  of  the  tidewater  darky  means  com- 
plaining and  not  what  it  means  with  us,  but 
they  bade  me  hush  while  w^e  hearkened  to  the 
next  two  verses,  each  of  two  lines,  with  the 
chorus  repeated  after  the  second  line: 

In  FoHeen  Hunnerd  an'  Ninety-two 
My  Lawd  begin  his  work  to  do! 

[286] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


In  Fo'teen  Hunnerd  an*  Ninety-three 
Dey  nailed  my  Saviour  on  de  gallows  tree. 

And  back  to  the  first  verse — there  were  only 
three  verses,  it  seemed — and  through  to  the 
third,  over  and  over  again. 

An  invisible  choir  leader  broke  in  with  a 
different  song  and  the  others  caught  it  up.  But 
.this  one  we  all  knew — My  Soul  Bears  Witness 
to  de  Lawd — so  we  started  the  machine  and 
rode  round  from  back  of  the  wall.  The  singers, 
twenty  or  more  of  them,  were  lying  at  ease  on 
the  earth  alongside  a  house  in  the  bright,  bak- 
ing sunshine  of  a  still  young  but  very  ardent 
summer.  On  beyond  them  everywhere  the 
place  swarmed  with  their  fellows  in  khaki,  some 
doing  nothing  at  all  and  some  doing  the  things 
that  an  American  soldier,  be  he  black  or  white, 
is  apt  to  do  when  off  duty  in  billets.  Almost 
without  exception  they  were  big  men,  with 
broad  shoulders  and  necks  like  bullocks,  and 
their  muscles  bulged  their  sleeves  almost  to 
bursting.  From  the  fact  that  nine  out  of  ten 
were  coal-black  and  from  a  certain  intonation  in 
their  voices  never  found  among  up-country 
negroes,  a  man  familiar  with  the  dialects  and 
the  types  of  the  Far  South  might  know  them  for 
natives  of  the  rice  fields  and  the  palmetto  bar- 
rens of  the  coast.  Lower  Georgia  and  South 
Carolina — there  was  where  they  had  come  from 
plainly  enough,  with  perhaps  a  sprinkling  among 
them  of  Florida  negroes.     Our  course,  steered 

[287] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


as  it  was  by  chance  reckoning,  had  nevertheless 
been  a  true  one. 

We  had  found  the  draft  outfit  first.  By  the 
same  token,  if  our  original  informant  had  been 
right,  another  negro  regiment — of  volunteers 
this  time — would  be  found  some  fifteen  miles 
to  the  eastward  and  northward  of  where  we 
were;  and  this  latter  unit  was  the  one  whose 
whereabouts  we  mainly  desired  to  discover, 
since,  if  it  turned  out  to  be  the  regiment  we 
thought  it  must  be,  its  colonel  would  be  a 
personal  friend  of  all  three  of  us  and  his  adjutant 
would  be  a  former  copy  reader  who  had  served 
on  the  staff  of  the  same  evening  newspaper 
years  before,  with  two  of  us. 

We  halted  a  while  to  pay  our  respects  to  the 
commander  of  these  strapping  big  black  men — 
a  West  Pointer,  still  in  his  thirties  and  in- 
ordinately proud  of  the  outfit  that  was  under 
him.  He  had  cause  to  be.  I  used  to  think 
that  sitting  down  was  the  natural  gait  of  the 
tidewater  darky;  but  here,  as  any  one  who 
looked  might  see,  were  soldiers  who  bore  them- 
selves as  smartly,  who  were  as  snappy  at  the 
salute  and  as  sharp  set  at  the  drill  as  any  of 
their  lighter-skinned  fellow  Americans  in  service 
anywhere.  Most  of  the  officers  were  Southern- 
born  men,  they  having  been  purposely  picked 
because  of  a  belief  that  they  would  understand 
the  negro  temperament.  That  the  choosing  of 
Southern  officers  had  been  a  sane  choosing  was 
proved  already,  I  think,  by  what  we  saw  as  well 

[  288  ] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


as  by  things  we  heard  that  day.  For  example, 
one  of  the  majors — a  young  Tennesseean — told 
us  this  tale,  laughing  while  he  told  us : 

"We've  abolished  two  of  our  sentry  posts  in 
this  town.  Right  over  yonder,  beyond  what's 
left  of  the  village  church,  is  what's  left  of  the 
village  cemetery.  I'll  take  you  to  see  it  if  you 
care  to  go,  though  it's  not  a  very  pleasant  sight. 
For  a  year  or  more  back  in  1914  and  1915  shells 
used  to  fall  in  it  pretty  regularly  and  rip  open 
the  graves  and  scatter  the  bones  of  those  poor 
folks  who  were  buried  there — you  knov/  the 
sort  of  thing  you're  likely  to  find  in  any  of  these 
little  places  that  have  been  under  heavy  bom- 
bardment. Well,  when  we  moved  here  a  week 
and  a  half  ago  and  got  settled  a  delegation  from 
the  ranks  waited  on  the  C.  O.  They  told  him 
that  they  had  come  over  here  to  fight  the 
Germans  and  that  they  were  willing  to  fight 
the  Germans  and  anxious  to  start  the  job  right 
Siway,  but  that,  discipline  or  no  discipline,  war 
or  no  war,  orders  or  no  orders,  they  just  natu- 
rally couldn't  be  made  to  hang  round  a  cemetery 
after  dark. 

"  *Kernul,  suh,'  the  spokesman  said,  *ef  you 
posts  any  of  us  cullud  boys  'longside  dat  air 
buryin'  ground,  w'y  long  about  midnight  some- 
thin'll  happen  an'  you's  sartain  shore  to  be 
shy  a  couple  of  niggers  when  de  mawnin'  comes. 
Kernul,  suh,  we  don't  none  of  us  wanter  be 
shot  fur  runnin'  'way,  but  dat's  perzactly 
whut's  gwine  happen  ef  ary  one  of  us  has  to 

[289] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

march  back  an'  fo'th  by  dat  place  w'en  de 
darkness  of  de  night  sets  in.'  And  the  colonel 
understood,  and  he  took  mercy  on  'em,  so 
that's  why  if  the  Germans  should  happen  to 
arrive  at  night  by  way  of  the  graveyard  they 
could  march  right  among  us,  probably  without 
having  a  shot  fired  at  them. 

"But  don't  think  our  bovs  are  afraid,"  the 
young  major  added  with  pride  in  his  voice. 
"I'd  take  a  chance  on  going  anywhere  with  these 
black  soldiers  at  my  back.  So  would  any  of  the 
rest  of  the  officers.  We  haven't  had  any  actual 
fighting  experience  yet — that'll  come  in  a  week 
or  two  when  we  relieve  a  French  regiment  that's 
just  here  in  front  of  us  holding  the  front  lines — 
but  we  are  not  worrying  about  what '11  happen 
when  we  get  our  baptism  of  fire.  Only  I'm 
afraid  we're  going  to  have  a  mighty  disappointed 
regiment  on  our  hands  in  about  two  months 
from  now,  when  these  black  boys  of  ours  find 
out  that  even  in  the  middle  of  August  water- 
melons don't  grow  in  Northern  France." 

As  we  left  the  regimental  headquarters,  which 
was  a  half-shattered  wine  shop  with  breaches  in 
the  wall  and  less  than  half  a  roof  to  its  top 
floor,  the  young  major  went  along  with  us  to 
our  car  to  give  our  chauffeur  better  directions 
touching  on  a  maze  of  cross  roads  along  the  last 
lap  of  the  run. 

En  route  he  enriched  my  notebook  with  a 
lovely  story,  having  the  merit  moreover — a  merit 
that  not  all  lovely  stories  have — of  being  true. 

[290] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


"Day  before  yesterday,"  so  his  narrative 
ran,  "we  began  drilling  the  squads  in  grenade 
throwing — with  live  grenades.  Up  until  then 
we'd  exercised  them  only  on  dummy  grenades, 
but  now  they  were  going  to  try  out  the  real 
thing.  We  had  batches  of  the  new  grenades — 
the  kind  that  are  exploded  by  striking  the  cap  at 
the  lower  end  upon  something  hard.  You 
probably  know  how  the  drill  is  carried  on: 
At  the  call  of  'One'  from  the  squad  commander 
the  men  strike  the  cap  ends  against  a  stone  or 
something;  at  *Two'  they  draw  back  the  thing 
full  arm  length,  and  at  'Three'  they  toss  it  with 
a  stiff  overhand  swing.  There's  plenty  of 
time  of  course  for  all  this  if  nobody  fumbles, 
because  the  way  the  fuses  are  timed  five  seconds 
elapse  between  the  striking  of  the  cap  and  the 
explosion.  If  you  fling  your  grenade  too  soon  a 
Heinie  is  liable  to  pick  it  up  and  throw  it  back 
at  you  before  it  goes  off.  If  you  hold  it  too  long 
you're  apt  to  lose  an  arm  or  your  life.  That's 
why  we  are  so  particular  about  timing  the 
movements. 

"Well,  one  squad  lined  up  out  here  in  a  field 
with  their  eyes  bulging  out  like  china  door 
knobs.  They  were  game  enough  but  they 
weren't  very  happy.  The  moment  the  word 
*One'  was  given  a  little  stumpy  darky  in  my 
battalion  that  we  call  Sugar  Foot  flung  his 
grenade  as  far  as  he  could. 

"When  the  rest  of  the  grenades  had  been 
thrown  the  platoon  commander  jumped  all  over 

[  291  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

Sugar  Foot.  He  said  to  him:  'Look  here, 
what  did  you  mean  by  throwing  that  grenade 
before  these  other  boys  threw  theirs?  Don't 
you  know  enough  to  wait  for  "Three"  before 
you  turn  loose?' 

"  *Yas,  suh,  Heutenant,'  says  Sugar  Foot; 
*but  I  jes'  natchelly  had  to  th'ow  it.  W'y, 
lieutenant,  I  could  feel  dat  thing  a-swellin' 
in  my  hand.'  " 

It  may  have  been  the  same  Sugar  Foot — 
assuredly  it  was  the  lilies  of  him — Vv'ho  gave 
us  the  salute  so  briskly  as  we  sped  out  of  the 
village  on  the  far  side  from  the  side  on  which 
we  entered  it.  Followed  then  a  swift  cours- 
ing through  a  French-held  sector  wherein 
at  each  unfolding  furlong  of  chalky-white 
highway  we  beheld  sights  which,  being  totted 
up,  would  have  made  enough  to  write  a  book 
about,  say  three  years  back.  But  three  years 
back  is  ancient  history  in  this  war,  and 
what  once  would  have  run  into  chapters  is 
now  worth  no  more  than  a  paragraph,  if  that 
much. 

At  the  end  of  this  leg  of  the  journey  we  were 
well  out  of  the  static  zone  and  well  into  the 
active  one.  And  so,  after  going  near  where 
sundry  French  batteries  ding-donged  away  with 
six-inch  shells — shrapnel,  high  explosives  and 
gas  in  equal  doses — at  a  German  position  five 
miles  away,  we  emerged  from  the  protecting 
screenage  of  forest  after  the  fashion  stated  in 
the  opening  sentences  of  this  chapter,  and  learned 

[292] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


that  we  had  landed  where  we  had  counted  on 
landing  when  we  started  out. 

It  was  the  regiment  we  were  looking  for, 
sure  enough.  Its  colonel,  our  friend,  having 
been  apprised  by  telephone  from  two  miles 
rearward  at  one  of  his  battalion  headquarters 
that  we  were  approaching,  had  sent  word  per 
runner  that  he  waited  to  welcome  us  down  at  his 
present  station  just  behind  the  forward  observa- 
tion posts. 

So  we  climbed  aboard  the  one  piece  of  rolling 
stock  that  was  left  astride  the  metals  of  a  road 
over  which,  until  August  of  1914,  transconti- 
nental trains  had  whizzed,  and  the  ginger- 
colored  humourist  slapped  the  sloping  withers  of 
his  steed  and  that  patient  brute  flinched  a 
protesting  flinch  that  ran  through  his  frame 
from  neck  to  flanks,  and  we  were  off  for  the 
front  trenches  by  way  of  the  Fifty-ninth  Street 
cross-town  line  on  as  unusual  a  journey  as  I, 
for  one,  have  taken  since  coming  over  here  to 
this  war-worn  country,  where  the  unusual  thing 
is  the  common  thing  these  days.  Off  with  an 
ex-apartment-house  doorman  from  San  Juan 
Hill,  New  York  City,  for  our  steersman;  a 
creaking  small  flat  car  for  a  chariot;  a  home- 
grown mule  for  motive  power;  a  Yankee  second 
lieutenant  and  a  French  liaison  officer  for  added 
passengers ;  and  for  special  scenic  touches  along- 
side the  bramble-grown  cut  through  which  we 
jogged,  machine  guns  so  mounted  as  to  com- 
mand aisles  chopped  through  the  thickets,  and 

[293] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

three-inch  guns  plying  busily  at  an  unseen 
objective.  To  this  add  the  whewful  remarks 
let  fall  in  passing  by  the  big  ones  from  farther 
back  as  they  conversed  among  themselves  on 
their  way  over  to  annoy  the  Hun,  and  at  inter- 
vals aerial  skirmishes  occurring  away  up  over- 
head— 'twas  a  braw  and  a  bonny  day  for  aerial 
fighting,  as  a  stage  Scotchman  might  say — and 
you  will  have  a  fairly  complete  picture  of  the 
ensemble  in  your  own  mind,  I  trust.  But  don't 
forget  to  stir  in  the  singing  of  birds  and  the 
buzzing  of  insects. 

The  negro  troopers  we  encountered  now, 
here  in  the  copses,  sometimes  singly  or  oftener 
still  in  squads  and  details,  were  dissimilar 
physically  as  well  as  in  certain  temperamental 
respects  to  their  fellows  of  the  draft  regiment 
we  had  seen  a  little  while  before.  They  were 
apt  to  be  mulattoes  or  to  have  light-brown 
complexions  instead  of  clear  black;  they  were 
sophisticated  and  town  wise  in  their  bearing; 
their  idioms  differed  from  those  others,  and 
their  accents  too;  for  almost  without  exception 
they  were  city  dwellers  and  many  of  them  had 
been  born  North,  whereas  the  negroes  from 
Dixie  were  rural  products  drawn  out  of  the 
heart  of  the  Farther  South.  But  for  all  of  them 
might  be  said  these  things:  They  were  soldiers 
who  wore  their  uniforms  with  a  smartened 
pride;  who  were  jaunty  and  alert  and  prompt 
in  their  movements;  and  who  expressed,  as 
some  did  vocally  in  my  hearing,  and  all  did 

[294] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


by  their  attitude,  a  sincere  and  heartfelt  in- 
clination to  get  a  whack  at  the  foe  with  the 
shortest  possible  delay.  I  am  of  the  opinion 
personally — and  I  make  the  assertion  with  all 
the  better  grace,  I  think,  seeing  that  I  am  a 
Southerner  with  all  of  the  Southerner's  inherited 
and  acquired  prejudices  touching  on  the  race 
question — that  as  a  result  of  what  our  black 
soldiers  are  going  to  do  in  this  war,  a  w^ord  that 
has  been  uttered  billions  of  times  in  our  coun- 
try, sometimes  in  derision,  sometimes  in  hate, 
sometimes  in  all  kindliness — but  which  I  am 
sure  never  fell  on  black  ears  but  it  left  behind  a 
sting  for  the  heart — is  going  to  have  a  new 
meaning  for  all  of  us,  South  and  North  too,  and 
that  hereafter  n-i-g-g-e-r  will  merely  be  another 
way  of  spelling  the  word  American. 

However,  that  is  getting  in  the  moral  of  my 
tale  before  I  am  anywhere  near  its  proper 
conclusion.  The  reader  consenting,  we'll  go 
back  to  the  place  where  we  were  just  now, 
when  we  rode  over  the  one-mule  traffic  line  to 
the  greeting  that  had  been  organised  for  us  two 
miles  away.  By  chance  we  had  chosen  a  most 
auspicious  moment  for  our  arrival.  For  word 
had  just  been  received  touching  on  the  honours 
which  the  French  Government  had  been  pleased 
to  confer  upon  two  members  of  the  regiment, 
Henry  Johnson  and  Needham  Roberts,  to  wit, 
as  follows:  For  each  the  War  Cross  and  for 
each  a  special  citation  before  the  whole  French 
Army,  and  in  addition  a  golden  palm,  signifying 

[295] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

extraordinary  valour,  across  the  red-and-green 
ribbon  of  Johnson's  decoration.  So  it  was 
shortly  coming  to  pass  that  a  negro,  almost 
surely,  would  be  the  first  private  of  the  American 
Expeditionary  Forces  to  get  a  golden  palm 
along  with  his  Croix  de  Guerre.  It  might  be 
added,  though  the  statement  is  quite  super- 
fluous in  view  of  the  attendant  circumstances, 
that  he  earned  it. 

Through  the  cable  dispatches  which  my 
companions  straightway  sent,  they  being  corre- 
spondents for  daily  papers,  America  learned 
how  Johnson  and  Roberts,  two  comparatively 
green  recruits,  were  attacked  at  night  in  a 
front-line  strong  point  by  a  raiding  party 
estimated  to  number  between  twenty  and 
twenty -five;  and  how  after  both  had  been 
badly  wounded  and  after  Roberts  had  gone 
down  WTth  a  shattered  leg  he,  lying  on  his  back, 
flung  hand  grenades  with  such  effect  that  he 
blew  at  least  one  of  the  raiders  to  bits  of  scrap 
meat;  and  how  Johnson  first  with  bullets,  then 
with  his  clubbed  rifle  after  he  had  emptied  it, 
and  finally  with  his  bolo  gave  so  valiant  an  ac- 
count of  himself  that  the  attacking  party  fled 
back  to  their  own  lines,  abandoning  most  of 
their  equipment  and  carrying  with  them  at  least 
five  of  their  number,  who  had  been  either  killed 
outright  or  most  despitefully  misused  by  the 
valiant  pair.  If  ever  proof  were  needed, 
which  it  is  not,  that  the  colour  of  a  man's  skin 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  colour  of  his  soul 

[296] 


YOUNG    BLACK    JOE 


these  twain  then  and  there  offered  it  in  abun- 
dance. 

The  word  of  what  the  French  military 
authorities  meant  to  do  having  been  received, 
it  had  spread,  and  its  lesson  was  bearing  fruit. 
So  we  found  out  when  the  colonel  took  us 
on  a  journey  through  the  forward  trenches. 
Every  other  private  and  every  other  noncom. 
we  ran  across  had  his  rifle  apart  and  was  care- 
fully oiling  it.  If  they  were  including  the 
coloured  boys  now  when  it  came  to  passing 
round  those  crosses  he  meant  to  get  one  too, 
and  along  with  it  a  mess  of  Germans — Bush- 
Germans,  by  his  way  of  expression.  The  negro 
soldier  in  France  insists  on  pronouncing  boche  as 
Bush,  and  on  coupling  the  transmogrified  word 
to  the  noun  German,  possibly  because  the 
African  mind  loves  mouth-filling  phrases  or 
perhaps  just  to  make  all  the  clearer  that, 
according  to  his  concepts,  every  boche  is  a 
German  and  every  German  is  a  boche. 

As  we  passed  along  we  heard  one  short 
and  stumpy  private,  with  a  complexion  like 
the  bottom  of  a  coal  mine  and  a  smile  like 
the  sudden  lifting  of  a  piano  lid,  call  out  to  a 
mate  as  he  fitted  his  greased  rifle  together: 

"Henry  Johnson,  he  done  right  well,  didn't 
he?  But  say,  boy,  effen  they'll  jes  gimme  a 
razor  an'  a  armload  of  bricks  an'  one  half 
pint  of  bust-haid  licker  I  kin  go  plum  to  Berlin. " 


[297] 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
"LET'S  GO!" 


THE  most  illuminating  insight  of  all, 
into  the  strengthened  ambition  which 
animated  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Old 
Fifteenth  was  vouchsafed  to  us  as  we 
three,  following  along  behind  the  tall  shape  of 
the  Colonel,  rounded  a  corner  of  a  trench  and 
became  aware  of  a  soldier  who  sat  cross-legged 
upon  his  knees  with  his  back  turned  to  us  and 
was  so  deeply  intent  upon  the  task  in  hand 
that  he  never  heeded  our  approach  at  all.  On 
a  silent  signal  from  our  guide  we  tiptoed  near 
so  we  could  look  downward  over  the  bent 
shoulders  of  the  unconscious  one  and  this, 
then,  was  what  we  saw: 

A  small,  squarely  built  individual,  of  the 
colour  of  a  bottle  of  good  cider-vinegar,  who 
balanced  upon  his  knees  a  slab  of  whitish  stone 
— it  looked  like  a  scrap  of  tombstone  and  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  is  what  it  was — and  in  his 
two  hands,  held  by  the  handle,  a  bolo  with  a 
nine-inch  blade.  First  he  would  anoint  the 
uppermost  surface  of  the  white  slab  after  the 

[298] 


^^let's  goI" 


ordained  fashion  of  those  who  use  whetstones, 
then  industriously  he  would  hone  his  blade; 
then  he  would  try  its  edge  upon  his  thumb  and 
then  anoint  and  whet  some  more.  And  all 
the  while,  under  his  breath,  he  crooned  a  little 
wordless,  humming  song  which  had  in  it  some  of 
the  menace  of  a  wasp's  petulant  buzzing.  He 
was  making  war-medicine.  A  United  States 
soldier  whose  remote  ancestors  by  preference 
fought  hand  to  hand  with  their  enemies,  was 
qualifying  to  see  Henry  Johnson  and  go  him 
one  better.  The  picture  was  too  sweet  a  one  to 
be  spoiled  by  breaking  in  on  it.  We  slipped 
back  out  of  sight  so  quietly  the  knife-sharpener 
could  never  have  suspected  that  spying  eyes 
had  looked  in  upon  him  as  he  engaged  in  these 
private  devotions  of  his. 

"They're  all  like  that  buddy  with  the  bolo, 
and  some  of  them  are  even  more  so,"  said 
the  colonel  after  we  had  tramped  back  again 
to  the  dugout  in  a  chalk  cliff,  which  he  tem- 
porarily occupied  as  a  combination  parlour, 
boudoir,  office,  breakfast  room  and  head- 
quarters. "We  were  a  pretty  green  outfit  when 
they  brought  us  over  here.  Why,  even  after 
we  got  over  to  France  some  of  my  boys 
used  to  write  me  letters  tendering  their  res- 
ignations, to  take  effect  immediately.  They 
had  come  into  the  service  of  their  own 
free  will — as  volunteers  in  the  National  Guard 
— so  when  they  got  tired  of  soldiering,  as  a 
few  of  them  did  at  first,  they  couldn't  under- 

[299] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

stand  why  they  shouldn't  go  out  of  their  own 
free  wills. 

"They  used  us  on  construction  work  down 
near  one  of  the  ports  for  a  while  after  we  landed. 
Then  here  a  couple  of  weeks  ago  they  sent  us 
up  to  take  over  this  sector.  The  men  are  fond 
of  saying  that  all  they  had  by  way  of  prepara- 
tion for  the  job  was  four  days'  drilling  and  a 
haircut. 

"Did  I  say  just  now  that  we  were  green? 
Well,  that  doesn't  half  describe  it,  let  me  tell 
you.  This  sector  was  calm  enough,  as  front- 
line sectors  go,  when  we  took  it  over.  But  the 
first  night  my  fellows  had  hardly  had  time 
enough  to  learn  to  find  their  way  about  the 
trenches  when  from  a  forward  rifle  pit  a  rocket 
of  a  certain  colour  went  up,  signifying:  *We 
are  being  attacked  by  tanks.' 

"It  gave  me  quite  a  shock,  especially  as  there 
had  been  no  artillery  preparation  from  Fritz's 
side  of  the  wire,  and  besides  there  is  a  swamp 
between  the  lines  right  in  front  of  where  that 
rifle  pit  is,  so  I  didn't  exactly  see  how  tanks  were 
going  to  get  across  unless  the  Germans  ferried 
them  over  in  skiffs.  So  before  calling  out  the 
regiment  I  decided  to  make  a  personal  investi- 
gation. But  before  I  had  time  to  start  on  it 
two  more  rockets  went  up  from  another  rifle 
pit  at  the  left  of  the  first  one,  and  according  to 
the  code  these  rockets  meant:  *Lift  your 
barrage — we  are  about  to  attack  in  force.* 
Since  we  hadn't  been  putting  down  any  barrage 

[  300] 


''let's  goI" 


and  there  was  no  reason  for  an  attack  and  no 
order  for  one  this  gave  me  another  shock.  So 
I  put  out  hot-foot  to  find  out  what  was  the 
matter. 

"It  seemed  a  raw  recruit  in  the  first  pit  had 
found  a  box  of  rockets.  Just  for  curiosity,  I 
suppose,  or  possibly  because  he  wished  to  show 
the  Bush-Germans  that  he  regarded  the  whole 
thing  as  being  in  the  nature  of  a  celebration, 
or  maybe  because  he  just  wanted  to  see  what 
would  happen  afterward,  he  touched  off  one 
of  them.  And  then  a  fellow  down  the  line 
seeing  this  rocket  decided,  I  guess,  that  a 
national  holiday  of  the  French  was  being 
observed  and  so  he  touched  off  two.  But  it 
never  will  happen  again. 

"The  very  next  night  we  had  a  gas  alarm  two 
miles  back  of  here  in  the  next  village,  where 
one  of  my  battalions  is  billeted.  It  turned  out 
to  be  a  false  alarm,  but  all  through  the  camp 
the  sentries  were  sounding  their  automobile 
horns  as  a  warning  for  gas  masks.  But  Major 
Blank's  orderly  didn't  know  the  meaning  of  the 
signals,  or  if  he  did  know  he  forgot  it  in  the 
excitement  of  the  moment.  Still  he  didn't 
lose  his  head  altogether.  As  he  heard  the 
sound  of  the  tootings  coming  nearer  and  nearer 
he  dashed  into  the  major's  billet — the  major  is 
a  very  sound  sleeper — and  grabbed  him  by  the 
shoulder  and  shook  him  right  out  of  his  blankets. 

"  *Wake  up,  major!'  he  yelled,  trying  to 
keep  on  shaking  with  one  hand  and  to  salute 

[301  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

with  the  other.  *Fur  Gawd's  sake,  suh,  wake 
up.  The  Germans  is  comin' — in  automo- 
biles !' 

"Oh  yes,  they  were  green  at  the  start;  but 
they  are  as  game  as  any  men  in  this  man's 
Army  are.  You  take  it  from  me,  because  I 
know.  They  weren't  afraid  of  the  cold  and 
the  wet  and  the  terrific  labour  when  they 
worked  last  winter  down  near  the  coast  of 
France  on  as  mean  a  job  of  work  as  anybody 
ever  tackled.  They  were  up  to  their  waists 
in  cold  water  part  of  the  time — yes,  most  of 
the  time  they  were — but  not  a  one  of  them 
flinched.  And  believe  me  there's  no  flinching 
among  them  now  that  we  are  up  against  the 
Huns!  You  don't  need  the  case  of  Johnson 
and  Roberts  to  prove  it.  It  is  proved  by  the 
attitude  of  every  single  man  among  them. 
It  isn't  hard  to  send  them  into  danger — the  hard 
part  is  to  keep  them  from  going  into  it  on  their 
own  accord.  They  say  the  dark  races  can't 
stand  the  high  explosives — that  their  nerves 
go  to  pieces  under  the  strain  of  the  terrific 
concussion.  If  that  be  so  the  representatives 
of  the  dark  races  that  come  from  America  are 
the  exceptions  to  the  rule.  My  boys  are 
getting  fat  and  sassy  on  a  fare  of  bombings  and 
bombardments,  and  we  have  to  watch  them 
like  hawks  to  keep  them  from  slipping  off  on 
little  independent  raiding  parties  without  telling 
anybody  about  it  in  advance.  Their  real  test 
hasn't  come  yet,  but  when  it  does  come  you 

[  302  ] 


^^let's  go!" 


take  a  tip  from  me  and  string  your  bets  along 
with  this  minstrel  troupe  to  win. 

"My  men  have  a  catch  phrase  that  has  come 
to  be  their  motto  and  their  slogan.  Tell  any 
one  of  them  to  do  a  certain  thing  and  as  he 
gets  up  to  go  about  it  he  invariably  says, 
*Let's  go!'  Tell  a  hundred  of  them  to  do  a 
thing  and  they'll  say  the  same  thing.  I  hear 
it  a  thousand  times  a  day.  The  mission  may 
involve  discomfort  or  the  chance  of  a  sudden 
and  exceedingly  violent  death.  No  matter — 
'Let's  go!'  that's  the  invariable  answer.  Per- 
sonally I  think  it  makes  a  pretty  good  maxim 
for  an  outfit  of  fighting  men,  and  I'll  stake  my 
life  on  it  that  they'll  live  up  to  it  when  the  real 
trial  comes. " 

Two  days  we  stayed  on  there,  and  they  were 
two  days  of  a  superior  variety  of  coatinuous 
black-face  vaudeville.  There  was  the  evening 
when  for  our  benefit  the  men  organised  an 
impromptu  concert  featuring  a  quartet  that 
would  succeed  on  any  man's  burlesque  circuit, 
and  a  troupe  of  buck-and-wing  dancers  whose 
equals  it  would  be  hard  to  find  on  the  Big 
Time.  There  was  the  next  evening  when  the 
band  of  forty  pieces  serenaded  us.  I  think 
surely  this  must  be  the  best  regimental  band  in 
our  Army.  Certainly  it  is  the  best  one  I  have 
heard  in  Europe  during  this  war.  On  parade 
when  it  played  the  Memphis  Blues  the  men  did 
not  march;  the  music  poured  in  at  their  ears 
and  ran  down  to  their  heels,  and  instead  of 

[  303] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

marching  they  literally  danced  their  way  along. 
As  for  the  dwellers  of  the  French  towns  in  which 
this  regiment  has  from  time  to  time  been 
quartered,  they,  I  am  told,  fairly  go  mad  when 
some  alluring,  compelling,  ragtime  tune  is 
played  with  that  richness  of  syncopated  melody 
in  it  which  only  the  black  man  can  achieve; 
and  as  the  regiment  has  moved  on,  more  than 
once  it  has  been  hard  to  keep  the  unattached 
inhabitants  of  the  village  that  the  band  was 
quitting  from  moving  on  with  it. 

If  I  live  to  be  a  hundred  and  one  I  shall  never 
forget  the  second  night,  which  was  a  night 
of  a  splendid,  flawless  full  moon.  We  stood 
with  the  regimental  staff  on  the  terraced  lawn 
of  the  chief  house  in  a  half-deserted  town  five 
miles  back  from  the  trenches,  and  down  below 
us  in  the  main  street  the  band  played  plantation 
airs  and  hundreds  of  negro  soldiers  joined  in 
and  sang  the  words.  Behind  the  masses  of 
upturned  dark  faces  was  a  ring  of  white  ones 
where  the  remaining  natives  of  the  place 
clustered,  with  their  heads  wagging  in  time 
to  the  tunes. 

And  when  the  band  got  to  Way  Down  Upon 
the  Swanee  River  I  wanted  to  cry,  and  when 
the  drum  major,  who  likewise  had  a  splendid 
barytone  voice,  sang,  as  an  interpolated  number, 
Joan  of  Arc,  first  in  English  and  then  in  excel- 
lent French,  the  villagers  openly  cried;  and  an 
elderly  peasant,  heavily  whiskered,  with  the 
tears    of    a   joyous    and    thankful    enthusiasm 

[  304] 


'^let's  goI" 


running  down  his  bearded  cheeks,  was  with 
difficulty  restrained  from  throwing  his  arms 
about  the  soloist  and  kissing  him.  When  this 
type  of  Frenchman  feels  emotion  he  expresses 
it  laoistly. 

Those  two  days  we  heard  stories  without 
number,  all  of  them  true,  I  take  it,  and  most 
of  them  good  ones.  We  heard  of  the  yellow 
youth  who  beseeched  his  officer  to  send  him 
with  a  "dang'ous  message"  meaning  by  that 
that  he  craved  to  go  on  a  perilous  mission  for 
the  greater  glory  of  the  A.  E.  F.  and  incidentally 
of  himself;  and  about  the  jaunty  individual  who 
pulled  the  firing  wire  of  a  French  grenade  and 
catching  the  hissing  sound  of  the  fulminator 
working  its  way  toward  the  charge  exclaimed: 
"That's  it — fry,  gosh  dern  you,  fry!"  before  he 
threw  it.  And  about  how  a  sergeant  on  an 
emergency  trench-digging  job  stuck  to  the  task, 
standing  hip-deep  in  icy  water  and  icy  mud, 
until  from  chill  and  exhaustion  he  dropped  un- 
conscious and  was  like  to  drown  in  the  muck 
into  which  he  had  collapsed  head  downward, 
only  his  squad  discovered  him  up-ended  there 
and  dragged  him  out;  and  about  many  other 
things  small  or  great,  bespeaking  fortitude  and 
courage  and  fidelity  and  naive  Afric  waggery. 

Likevdse  into  my  possession  came  copies  of 
two  documents,  both  of  which  I  should  say  are 
typical  just  as  each  is  distinctive  of  a  different 
phase  of  the  negro  temperament.  One  of  them, 
the  first  one,   was  humorous.     Indeed  to  my 

[305  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

way  of  thinking  it  was  as  fine  an  example 
of  unconscious  humour  as  this  war  is  likely 
to  produce.  The  other  was — well,  judge  for 
yourself. 

Before  the  regiment  moved  forward  for  its 
dedication  to  actual  warfare  it  was  impressed 
upon  the  personnel  in  the  ranks  that  from  now 
on,  more  even  than  before,  a  soldier  in  his 
communications  with  his  superior  officer  must 
use  the  formal  and  precise  language  of  military 
propriety.  The  lesson  must  have  sunk  in, 
because  on  the  thrillsome  occasion  when  a 
certain  private  found  himself  for  the  first  time 
in  a  forward  rifle  pit  and  for  the  first  time 
heard  German  rifle  bullets  whistling  past  his 
ears  he  called  to  him  a  runner  and  dispatched  to 
the  secondary  lines  this  message,  now  quoted 
exactly  as  written  except  that  the  proper  names 
have  been  changed: 

"Lieutenant  Sidney  J.  McClelland, 

"Commanding  Company  B, ,  A.  E.  F., 

U.  S.  A. 

''Dear  Sir:  I  am  being  fired  on  heavily  from  the 

left.     I  await  your  instructions. 

"Trusting  these  few  lines  will  find  you  the  same, 

I  remain,  Yours  truly, 

"Jefferson  Jones.'* 

The  other  thing  was  an  extract  from  a 
letter  written  by  an  eighteen-year-old  private 
to  his  old  mother  in  New  York,  with  no  idea 
in  his  head  when  he  wrote  it  that  any  eyes 
other  than  those  of  his  own  people  would  read 

[306] 


''let's  go!'' 


it  after  it  had  been  censored  and  posted.  The 
officer  to  whom  it  came  for  censoring  copied 
from  it  one  paragraph,  and  this  paragraph  ran 
like  this: 

/*  Mammy,  these  French  people  don't  bother  with 
no  colour-line  business.  They  treat  us  so  good  that 
the  only  time  I  ever  knows  I'm  coloured  is  when  I 
looks  in  the  glass.'* 

Coming  away — and  we  came  reluctantly — 
we  skirted  the  edge  of  the  billeting  area  where 
the  regiment  of  Southern  negroes  w^as  quartered, 
and  again  we  heard  them  singing.  But  this 
time  they  sang  no  plaintive  meeting-house  air. 
They  sang  a  ringing,  triumphant,  Glory-Glory- 
Hallelujah  song.  For — so  we  learned — to  them 
the  word  had  come  that  they  were  about  to 
move  up  and  perhaps  come  to  grips  with  the 
Bush-Germans.  Yes,  most  assuredly  n-i-g- 
g-e-r  is  going  to  have  a  different  meaning  when 
this  war  ends. 


[307] 


CHAPTER  XIX 
WAR  AS  IT  ISN'T 


THREE  of  us,  correspondents,  had  gone 
up  with  a  division  of  ours  that  was 
taking  over  one  of  the  Picardy  sectors. 
The  French  moved  out  by  degrees  as 
we  by  degrees  moved  in.  On  the  night  when 
we  actually  came  into  the  front  lines  two  of  us 
slept — or  tried  to — in  a  house  of  a  village 
perhaps  a  mile  and  a  half  behind  the  forward 
trenches.  The  third  man  went  on  perhaps  a 
half  mile  nearer  the  trouble  zone  with  a  battalion 
of  an  infantry  regiment  that  on  the  morrow 
would  relieve  some  sorely  battered  poilus  in  the 
trenches.  It  is  with  an  experience  of  this  third 
man  I  now  mean  to  deal. 

He  found  lodgment  in  a  chateau  on  the  out- 
skirts of  a  village  the  name  of  which  does  not 
matter — and  probably  never  will  matter  again, 
seeing  that  it  fairly  was  blasted  out  of  the  earth 
by  its  foundations  the  next  time  the  Germans 
attempted  to  resume  their  advance  toward  the 
Channel.  As  for  the  chateau,  which  likewise 
must  be  quite  gone  by  now,  it  was  more  of  a 

[  308  ] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


chateau  than  some  of  the  buildings  that  go 
by  this  high-sounding  title  in  the  edges  of 
Normandy. 

A  chateau  may  mean  a  veritable  castle  of  a 
place,  with  towers  upon  it  and  a  moat  and 
gardens  and  terraces  and  trout  ponds  round 
about  it.  Then  again  on  the  other  hand  it 
may  mean  merely  a  sizable  private  residence, 
standing  somewhat  aloof  in  its  own  plot  from 
the  close-huddled  clustering  of  lesser  folks' 
cottages  that  make  up  the  town  proper.  The 
term  is  almost  as  elastic  in  its  classifications 
as  the  word  estate  is  in  America.  In  this 
instance,  though,  the  chateau  was  a  structure 
of  some  pretensions  and  much  consequence. 
Rather,  it  had  been  when  its  owner  fled  before 
the  great  spring  advance,  leaving  behind  him  all 
that  he  owned  except  a  few  portable  belongings. 
The  neighbours  had  run  away,  too,  and  for 
months  now  the  only  tenants  of  the  vicinity 
had  been  troops. 

French  officers  and  a  few  American  officers 
were  occupying  the  chateau.  Every  room  and 
every  hallway  was  crowded  already,  but  space 
for  the  correspondent  to  spread  down  his 
bedding  roll  was  provided  in  an  inner  chamber 
on  the  second  floor.  At  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  by  consent  of  the  divisional  com- 
mander, he  was  going  out  into  the  debatable 
land  between  the  trenches  with  a  wire-mending 
party.  There  is  always  a  chance  that  a  wire 
party  will  bump  into  a  squad  of  enemies  on  the 

f  309] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

prowl  or  surprise  a  raiding  outfit  from  Fritzie's 
trenches,  and  then  there  are  doings  to  ensue. 

Two  o'clock  was  four  hours  off  and  the  special 
guest  hoped  to  get  a  little  sleep  in  the  'tween 
times.  It  was  a  vain  hope,  because,  to  judge 
by  their  behaviour,  the  Germans  had  found  out 
a  relief  division  was  on  its  way  in.  Since 
nightfall  they  had  been  shelling  the  back  areas 
of  the  sector,  and  particularly  the  lines  of 
communication,  with  might  and  main — and  six- 
inch  guns.  For  the  most  part  the  shells  were 
passing  entirely  over  and  far  beyond  the 
chateau,  but  they  made  quite  as  much  noise 
as  though  they  had  been  dropping  in  the  court- 
yard outside — more  noise,  as  a  matter  of 
seeming,  because  the  screech  of  a  big  shell  in  its 
flight  overhead  racks  the  eardrums  as  the 
crash  of  the  explosion  rarely  does  unless  the 
explosion  occurs  w^ithin  a  few  rods  of  one. 

So  for  four  hours  or  thereabouts  our  corre- 
spondent lay  on  his  pallet,  wide-eyed,  and  with 
every  nerve  in  his  body  standing  on  end  and 
wriggling.  When  the  French  liaison  officer 
who  had  volunteered  to  escort  him  on  the 
adventure  rapped  upon  his  door  he  w^as  quite 
ready  to  start.  He  had  taken  off  nothing 
except  his  trench  helmet  and  his  gas  mask 
before  turning  in,  anyhow. 

"Walk  very  quietly,  if  you  please,"  bade  the 
Frenchman,  leading  the  way  out,  with  a  pocket 
flashlight  in  his  hand. 

Obeying  the  request  the  correspondent  tip- 

[310] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


toed  along  behind  his  guide. '  To  get  outdoors 
they  passed  through  two  other  rooms  and 
down  a  flight  of  stairs  and  along  a  hallway 
opening  into  the  wrecked  garden.  In  the  beds 
that  were  in  the  rooms  and  upon  blankets  on 
the  floors  of  the  rooms  and  also  in  the  hallway 
French  officers  were  stretched,  exhaling  the 
heavy  breaths  of  men  who  have  worked  hard 
and  who  need  the  rest  they  are  taking.  Only 
one  man  stirred,  and  that  was  downstairs  as  the 
pair  who  were  departing  picked  their  way 
between  the  double  rows  of  sleepers.  A  loose 
plank  creaked  sharply  under  the  weight  of  the 
American,  and  a  man  stirred  in  his  coverlids 
and  opened  his  eyes  for  a  moment;  and  then, 
turning  over,  was  off  again  almost  instantly. 

At  that,  understanding  came  to  the  corre- 
spondent— he  knew  now  why  the  thoughtful 
liaison  officer  had  cautioned  him  to  step  lightly. 
To  these  men  lying  here  about  him  the  infernal 
clamour  of  the  shells  had  become  a  customary 
part  of  their  lives,  whether  waking  or  sleeping. 
To  their  natures,  accustomed  as  thev  were  to  it, 
this  hideous  din  was  a  lullaby  song.  But  any 
small  unusual  sound,  such  as  the  noise  of  a 
booted  foot  falling  upon  a  squeaky  board, 
might  rouse  them,  and  two  men  clumping  care- 
lessly past  them  would  have  brought  every  one 
of  them  out  of  his  slumbers,  sitting  up. 

Paradoxes  such  as  this  are  forever  cropping 
up  in  one's  wartime  experiences.  Indeed,  war 
may  be  said  to  be  made  up  of  countless  para- 

[311] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

doxes,  overlapping  and  piled  one  upon  another. 
To  me  the  most  striking  of  the  outstanding 
manifestations  of  war  on  its  paradoxical  side 
is  the  fact  that  in  this  war  nothing,  or  almost 
nothing,  actually  turns  out  in  accordance  with 
what  one's  idea  of  it  had  been  beforehand. 
Looking  backward  on  what  I  myself  have  viewed 
of  its  physical  and  metaphysical  aspects  I  can 
think  of  scarcely  an  element  or  a  phase  which 
accorded  with  my  preconceived  brain  image  of 
the  thing.  I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  as  a 
spectacle  it  has  been  disappointing,  but  that 
almost  invariably  it  has  been  different  from 
what  I  was  expecting  it  would  be.  I  found  this 
to  be  true  in  1914,  back  at  the  very  beginning. 
Take  for  example  the  fashion  after  which  men 
bear  themselves  as  they  go  into  battle;  and, 
for  a  more  striking  illustration  than  that,  their 
customary  deportment  after  they  actually  are 
in  the  battle.  I  figure  that  beforehand  my 
owm  notion  of  what  these  two  demonstrations 
would  be  like  was  based  probably  in  part  upon 
conceptions  derived  from  old-time  pictures  of 
Civil  War  engagements,  highly  coloured,  highly 
imaginative  representations  such  as  used  to 
hang  upon  the  parlour  walls  of  every  orthodox 
rural  home  in  our  country;  and  in  part  upon 
fiction  stories  with  war  for  a  background  which 
I  had  read;  and  finally  perhaps  in  some  lesser 
part  upon  the  moving-picture  man's  ideas  as 
worked  out  with  more  or  less  artistic  license  in 
the  pre-war  films.     I  rather  think  the  average 

[312] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


stay-at-home's  notions  in  these  regards  must 
be  pretty  much  what  mine  were,  because  he 
probably  derived  them  from  the  same  sources. 
The  utter  dissimilarity  of  the  actual  thing  as  I 
have  repeatedly  viewed  it  in  three  countries 
of  Europe  astonished  me  at  first,  and  in  lessen- 
ing degree  continued  to  astonish  me  until  the 
real  picture  of  it  had  supplanted  the  conjured 
one  in  my  mind. 

If  the  reader's  ideas  are  still  fundamentally 
organised  as  mine  formerly  were  he  thinks  men 
on  the  edge  of  the  fight,  with  the  prospect 
before  them  of  very  shortly  being  at  grips  with 
the  enemy,  maintain  a  sober  and  a  serious  front, 
wearing  upon  them  the  look  of  men  who  are 
upborne  and  inspired  by  a  purpose  to  acquit 
themselves  steadfastly  and  well.  By  the  same 
process  of  reasoning  I  take  it  that  the  reader, 
conceding  he  or  she  has  never  been  brought 
face  to  face  with  war,  pictures  men  on  the 
march  in  periods  of  comparative  immunity  from 
immediate  peril  as  singing  their  way  along,  with 
jokes  and  catchwords  flitting  back  and  forth  and 
a  general  holidaying  air  pervading  the  scene 
presented  by  the  swinging  column.  Now  my 
observation  has  been  that  the  exact  opposite  is 
commonlv  the  case. 

Men  on  the  casual  march,  sav,  from  one 
billeting  place  to  another,  are  apt  to  push  ahead 
stolidly  and  for  the  most  part  in  silence.  It  is 
hard  work,  marching  under  heavy  equipment 
is,  and  after  a  few  hours  of  it  the  strongest 

[313] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

J    I  II ■ 

individual  in  the  ranks  feels  the  pangs  of  weari- 
ness in  his  scissoring  legs  and  along  his  burdened 
back.  So  he  bends  forward  from  the  hips  and 
he  hunches  his  shoulders  and  wastes  mighty 
little  of  his  breath  in  idle  persiflage.  Only 
toward  the  end  of  the  journey,  when  rest  and 
food  are  in  impending  prospect,  do  his  spirits 
revive  to  a  point  where  he  feels  like  singing 
and  guying  his  mates.  The  thud-thud-thud 
of  the  feet  upon  the  highroad,  the  grunted  com- 
mands of  the  officers,  and  the  occasional  clatter 
of  metal  striking  against  metal  as  a  man  shifts 
his  piece  are  likely  to  be  the  only  accom- 
paniments of  the  hike  for  miles  on  end;  and 
there  isn't  much  music  really  in  such  sounds  as 
these. 

But  suppose  the  same  men  are  moving  into 
action  and  know  whither  they  are  bound.  The 
preliminary  nervousness  that  possesses  every 
normally  constituted  man  at  the  prospect  of 
facing  the  deadliest  forms  of  danger  now  moves 
these  men  to  hide  their  true  emotions  under  a 
masking  of  gaiety.  This  gaiety,  which  largely 
is  assumed  at  the  outset,  presently  becomes 
their  real  mood.  Nine  men  out  of  ten  who  pass 
are  indulging  in  quips  and  catches.  Nine  in 
ten  are  ready  to  laugh  at  trivialities  that 
ordinarily  would  go  unnoticed.  One  standing 
by  to  watch  them  must  diagnose  the  average 
expression  on  the  average  face  as  betokening 
exultation  rather  than  exaltation.  The  tenth 
man  is  quiet  and  of  a  thoughtful  port.     He  is 

[  314] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


forcing  himself  to  appraise  the  situation  before 
him  in  its  right  proportions,  and  so  the  infection 
that  fills  his  comrades  passes  him  by.  Yet  it  is 
safe  to  bet  on  it  that  the  sober  one-tenth,  in  the 
high  hour  of  the  grapple,  will  contend  with  just 
as  much  gallantry  as  the  nine-tenths  can  hope 
to  show. 

Particularly  is  the  mental  slant  that  I  have 
here  sought  to  describe  true  in  its  applica- 
tion to  raw  troops  who  have  yet  to  taste  of 
close-up  fighting.  Seasoned  veterans  who  have 
weathered  the  experience  before  now  and  who 
know  what  it  means,  and  know,  too,  that  they 
may  count  upon  themselves  and  their  fellows 
to  acquit  themselves  valorously,  are  upborne 
by  a  certain  all-pervading  cheerfulness — perhaps 
as  a  rule  confidence  would  be  a  better  word  than 
cheerfulness — but  they  are  not  quite  so  noisy, 
not  quite  so  enthusiastic  as  the  greener  hands. 
At  this  moment  they  are  not  doing  very  much 
in  the  cheering  line,  though  they  will  yell  just 
as  loudly  as  any  when  the  order  is  to  fix  bay- 
onets and  charge. 

Paradoxically  the  reaction  upon  men  who 
have  come  whole  out  of  the  inferno  of  battling 
at  close  quarters  affects  these  two  compared 
classes  of  soldier-men  differently — at  least  that 
has  been  my  observation.  The  unseasoned 
men,  to  whom  the  hell  from  which  they  have 
just  emerged  has  been  for  them  a  new  kind  of 
hell,  are  as  likely  as  not  almost  downcast  in 
their  outward  demeanour,  irritable  and  peevish 

[315] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

in  their  language.  For  one  thing,  they  are  dog- 
tired;  for  another,  I  would  say,  a  true  apprecia- 
tion of  the  ordeal  through  which  they  have 
passed  is  now  coming  home  to  them;  for  still 
another,  the  shock  of  having  seen  their  mates 
wiped  out  all  about  them  surely  affects  the 
general  consciousness  of  the  survivors;  and 
finally,  as  I  appraise  their  sensations,  the  calm 
following  the  tumult  and  the  struggle  leaves 
them  well-nigh  numbed.  Certainly  it  fre- 
quently leaves  them  inarticulate  almost  to 
dumbness.  Give  them  twenty -four  hours  for 
rest  and  mental  adjustment,  and  the  coltishness 
of  youth  returns  to  them  in  ample  measure, 
especially  if  there  is  a  victory  to  their  credit. 

On  the  contrasting  hand,  if  you  want  to 
witness  an  exhibition  of  good  cheer  at  the  end 
of  a  day  of  fighting  seek  for  it  among  the 
veterans.  On  a  certain  day  in  May  when  the 
second  of  the  great  German  drives  was  in 
progress  I  chanced  to  be  at  a  spot  where  a 
brigade  of  French  infantry — a  brigade  with  a 
magnificent  record  made  earlier  in  the  war — 
was  thrown  into  action  to  reenforce  a  hard- 
pressed  and  decimated  British  command.  Al- 
most without  exception  the  little  dusty,  rusty 
poilus  went  to  the  fighting  in  a  sort  of  matter- 
of-fact  methodical  silence  more  impressive  to 
me  than  loud  outbursts  could  possibly  have 
been.  Quietly,  swiftly,  without  lost  motion  or 
vain  exclamations,  but  moving  all  like  men 
intent  upon  the  performance  of  a  difficult  and  an 

[316] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


unpleasant  but  a  highly  necessary  task,  they 
took  up  their  guns,  adjusted  their  packs  of 
ammunition,  set  their  helmets  over  their  fore- 
heads, and  walked  with  no  undue  haste  but 
only  with  an  assured  and  briskened  serenity 
into  the  awfulness  that  was  beyond  the  clouds 
of  smoke  and  dust,  just  yonder. 

That  same  evening,  by  a  streak  of  luck,  I 
returned  to  approximately  the  same  spot  at  the 
moment  when  those  who  were  left  of  the 
Frenchmen  prepared  to  bivouac  on  the  edges 
of  the  same  terrain  where  all  the  afternoon  they 
had  fought.  With  the  help  of  some  skeleton 
formations  of  British  companies  they  had 
withstood  the  German  onslaught;  more  than 
that,  they  had  broken  two  advancing  waves  of 
the  gray  coats  and  finally  had  swept  the  ripped 
and  riddled  legions  of  the  enemy  back  for  a  good 
mile,  so  that  now  they  held  the  field  as  victors. 
Elsewhere  along  that  fifty-mile  front  there  might 
be  a  different  story  to  tell,  but  here  in  this  small 
corner  of  the  great  canvas  of  the  mighty  battle 
a  localised  success  that  was  worth  while  had 
been  achieved  by  these  heroes.  Under  them 
now  their  legs  quivered  from  stark  weariness. 
Some  were  black  like  negroes;  the  stale  sweat 
and  the  dried  dirt  and  the  powder  grit  had 
caked  them  over.  Some  were  red  like  Indians, 
where  the  crusted  blood  from  small  uncon- 
sidered wounds  dyed  the  skin  on  their  faces 
and  their  hands. 

Now  with  the  fog  of  fighting  turning  grey 

[317] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

upon  their  unwashed  bodies  they  sprawled  on 
the  stained  and  trodden  meadow  grass  along- 
side the  road,  looking,  with  their  figures  fore- 
shortened by  lying,  most  absurdly  like  exceed- 
ingly dirty  small  boys  who  had  been  playing 
at  soldiering.  Yet  spent  and  worn  as  they  were 
they  gibed  us  as  we  passed,  and  with  uplifted 
canteens  they  toasted  us — presumably  in  the 
thin  Pinard;  and  they  sang  songs  without 
number  and  they  uttered  spicy  Gallic  jokes  at 
the  expense  of  the  mess  cooks  for  their  tardiness 
in  making  ready  the  supper  stews.  The  job  of 
the  day  was  done  with  and  ended;  it  was  a  fit 
time  for  being  merry,  and  these  little  men  were 
most  exceedingly  merry. 

Such  was  the  excess  of  their  jollifying  that 
had  one  not  known  better  one  might  have  sus- 
pected that  they  had  been  drinking  something 
stronger  than  the  thin  wine  ration  upon  which  no 
Frenchman  ever  gets  drunk.  I  recall  one  stunted 
chap  who  reeled  and  staggered  as  he  made  his 
way  toward  our  halted  car  to  ask  us  for  news 
from  the  eastward.  He  had  stuck  into  the 
sooted  muzzle  of  his  rifle  a  sheaf  of  wild  flowers; 
and  reeling  and  rocking  on  his  heels  he  sought 
to  embrace  us  when  we  offered  him  cigarettes. 
He  was  tipsy  all  right;  but  not  with  liquor — with 
emotion;  the  sort  of  emotion  that  temporarily 
befuddles  a  fighting  man  who  has  fought  well 
and  who  is  glad  to  have  finished  fighting  for 
the  time  being,  at  least.  As  we  left  him  he  was 
propped  upon  his  short  unsteady  legs  at  the 

[  318  ] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


roadside  singing  the  song  that  your  poilu  always 
by  preference  sings  when  his  mood  inclines  to 
the  blithesome;  he  sang  the  Madelon. 

Right  here,  I  think,  is  a  good  enough  time 
for  me  to  say  that  in  these  times  the  place  to 
hear  the  Marseillaise  hymn  played  or  sung  is 
not  France  but  America.  In  America  one 
hears  it  everywhere — the  hand  organs  play  it, 
the  theatre  orchestras  play  it,  the  military 
bands  play  it,  pretty  ladies  sing  it  at  patriotic 
concerts.  In  France  in  seven  months  I  have 
heard  it  just  twice — once  in  the  outskirts  of  the 
great  battle  on  March  twenty-sixth,  just  out- 
side of  Soissons,  when  a  handful  of  French 
soldiers  hurrying  up  to  the  fight  were  moved 
by  some  passing  fancy,  which  we  who  heard 
them  could  not  fathom,  to  chant  a  verse  or 
two  of  the  song;  and  again  on  Memorial  Day, 
when  an  American  band  played  it  in  a  French 
burying  ground  at  a  coast  town  where  the 
graves  of  three  hundred  of  our  own  soldiers  were 
decorated. 

It  may  be  that  the  Frenchman  has  grown 
wearied  of  the  sound  of  his  national  air,  or  it 
may  be — and  this,  I  think,  is  the  proper  explana- 
tion— that  in  this  time  of  stress  and  suffering 
for  his  land  the  Marseillaise  hymn  has  for  him 
become  a  thing  so  high  and  so  holy  that  he 
holds  it  for  sacred  moments,  to  be  rendered 
then  as  the  accompaniment  for  a  sacrificial  rite 
of  the  spirit  and  of  the  soul.  At  any  rate  it  is 
true  that  except  on  the  one  occasion  I  have 

[319] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

just  mentioned  I  have  yet  to  hear  the  French 
soldier  in  the  field  sing  the  Marseillaise  hymn. 
He  much  prefers  his  cheerful  chansons,  and 
when  an  American  band  plays  for  him  it  is  a 
jazz  tune  that  most  surely  may  be  counted 
upon  to  make  him  cry  ''Encore!'' 

As  illustrative  of  the  difference  in  tempera- 
ment between  the  veteran  and  the  beginner  at 
war  I  should  like  to  describe  what  many  times 
I  have  witnessed  as  an  incident  in  the  streets 
of  Paris.  All  through  the  past  spring  and  the 
early  part  of  the  summer  the  members  of  the 
class  of  1919  were  holding  celebrations  in  com- 
memoration of  the  fact  that  they  were  about  to 
be  called  to  the  service.  Their  emblematic 
colour  for  this  year  is  red,  and  their  chosen  flower 
is  the  poppy,  so  the  youngsters  call  themselves 
Coquelicots,  which  is  the  French  name  for 
the  crimson  wild  poppy  that  grows  everywhere 
in  France.  The  class  of  1918,  who  went  out 
last  year,  were  Paquerettes — white  daisies; 
and  those  of  1917  were  Bluets,  or  cornflowers. 
Every  three  years  the  fancy  repeats  itself  in 
the  same  sequence  and  the  same  cycle,  so  that 
the  trinity  of  the  national  colours  may  be  pre- 
served. 

Almost  any  hour,  day  or  night,  one  might 
see  troops  of  those  about  to  be  mobilised — 
schoolboys  of  eighteen,  apprentice  lads,  peasant 
youths,  cadets  of  military  academies — parading 
the  avenues.  They  wore  all  manner  of  fantastic 
garbings,  with  enormous  red  neckties  and  red 

[320] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


sashes,  and  battered  high  hats  banded  with 
red,  and  with  poppies  stuck  in  their  button- 
holes or  festooned  in  garlands  about  their  necks. 
And  always  they  were  singing  and  skylarking, 
marching  with  fantastic  jig  steps  in  grotesque 
queue  formations,  and  playing  pranks  upon 
the  pedestrians  who  got  in  their  way.  The 
sight  made  an  American  think  of  college  fra- 
ternities conducting  outdoor  initiations.  The 
scene  gave  colour  and  the  sparkle  of  youthful 
exuberance  to  a  city  where  the  sad  sights  are 
commoner  than  the  happy  ones.  ' 

It  was  inevitable  that  in  every  few  rods  of 
their  progress  the  youngsters  would  encounter 
soldiers  on  leave,  and  then  the  boys,  dropping 
for  a  moment  their  joyousness,  would  gravely 
salute  the  veterans,  and  the  veterans  as  gravely 
would  return  the  salute.  Then  the  roisterers 
would  whirl  off  down  the  sidewalk  waving  their 
exaggerated  walking  sticks  and  kicking  up 
their  heels  as  is  the  way  with  youth  the  world 
over,  and  the  soldiers  in  their  stained  patched 
tunics,  and  their  worn  leather  housings,  and 
with  their  worn  resolute  faces — how  often  I  have 
seen  this  little  byplay  repeated! — would  ex- 
change swift  expressive  glances  with  one  another 
and  smile  meaning,  sad  little  smiles,  and  shake 
their  heads  in  a  sort  of  passive  resignation  to 
the  inevitable,  before  they  went  trudging  on  in 
their  heavy,  run-down,  shabby  boots.  They 
knew — these  war-worn  elders  did — what  the 
chosen  man  children  of  the  generation  just 

:[  321  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

emerging  from  the  first  stages  of  its  adolescence 
would  very  shortly  be  called  upon  to  face; 
and  so  they  shook  their  heads  in  silent  but 
regretful  affirmation  of  the  certain  prospect  of 
an  added  burden  of  woefulness  and  suffering  for 
the  flowered  youth  of  their  stricken  land.  For 
these  men  who  had  trod  the  paths  of  glory  that 
are  so  flinty  and  so  hard  could  understand  what 
must  lie  ahead  so  much  better  than  those 
stripling  lads  to  whom  the  road  to  war  was  as 
yet  a  shining  and  a  golden  highway! 

Have  you  ever  seen  at  the  movies  a  film 
purporting  to  show  an  actual  scene  in  the 
trenches  under  hostile  fire,  wherein  the  men  on 
guard  there  all  faced,  with  squinted  eyes  and 
scowling  brows,  across  the  parapets,  fingering 
their  weapons  nervously,  and  rarely  or  never 
glanced  toward  the  camera,  but  seemingly  were 
so  absorbed  iii  their  ambitions  to  pot  the  f  oeman 
across  the  way  they  had  no  thought  for  any- 
thing except  the  tragic  undertaking  in  hand? 
Then  again,  have  you  ever  seen  another  so- 
called  war  reel  with  a  similar  setting,  which 
brought  before  you  the  figures  of  soldiers  who 
from  behind  the  shelter  of  the  piled-up  sand- 
bags grinned  self-consciously  in  the  direction  of 
the  machine  that  was  recording  their  forms  and 
their  movements  for  back-home  consumption, 
and  who  between  intervals  of  loading  and  firing 
deported  themselves  pretty  much  as  any  group 
of  sheepishly  pleased  young  men  might  while 
under  the  eye  of  a  photographing  machine  and 

[  322  ] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


who  for  the  moment  appeared  to  be  more  in- 
spired by  a  perfectly  normal  human  impulse 
to  show  off  than  by  any  other  thought? 

Now  I  have  seen  both  these  varieties  of 
pictures  and  assuming  that  the  reader  has, 
too,  I  put  to  him  or  her  this  question :  Granting 
that  one  of  these  films  was  the  genuine  article, 
namely,  a  view  of  a  section  of  a  front-line 
trench  taken  at  risk  of  the  operator's  life;  and 
that  the  other  was  a  manufactured  thing,  with 
carefully  rehearsed  supers  made  up  as  soldiers 
posing  in  obedience  to  a  hired  director's  orders, 
which  one,  in  the  reader's  opinion,  was  the 
authentic  thing  and  which  the  bogus? 

If  I  have  figured  the  probable  answer  aright 
the  probable  answer  is  wrong.  The  picture  in 
which  the  soldiers  behaved  in  conformity  with 
the  average  civilian's  notion  of  the  way  a  soldier 
does  behave  under  fire — to  wit,  by  being  all 
intent  upon  the  job  of  shooting,  with  no  regard 
for  any  lesser  diversions — was  the  imitation; 
and  the  film  in  which  you  saw  the  soldiers 
crowding  forward  in  the  narrow  trench  way  in 
order  to  be  sure  of  getting  into  the  focus  area — 
the  one  where  you  saw  the  soldiers  grinning 
toward  you  and  winking  and  nudging  their 
fellows  and  generally  behaving  like  curious  and 
embarrassed  children — well,  that  was  the  gen- 
uine article. 

For  the  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  once  the 
novelty  of  his  new  environment  has  worn  off — 
and  it  does  wear  off  with  marvellous  speed — 

[  323  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

the  soldier  in  the  front-line  trench  carries  on 
after  identically  the  same  patterns  that  would 
govern  him  under  ordinary  circumstances. 
The  detail  that  he  is  in  a  place  of  imminent 
danger  becomes  to  him  of  secondary  importance. 
Except  for  the  chance  that  any  moment  he  may 
stop  a  bullet  his  mode  of  habit  resolves  itself 
back  to  its  familiar  elements.  He  is  bored  or 
he  is  interested  by  exactly  the  same  things  that 
would  bore  him  or  excite  him  anywhere  else. 
To  him  the  shooting  back  and  forth  across  the 
top  very  soon  becomes  a  more  or  less  tedious 
part  of  the  daily  routine  of  the  trench  life,  but 
the  intrusion  into  his  corner  of  a  moving-picture 
man  with  a  camera  is  a  novelty,  an  event  very 
much  out  of  the  ordinary;  therefore  he  pays 
much  more  attention  to  the  taking  of  the 
picture  than  to  what  goes  on  pretty  steadily 
during  practically  all  of  his  waking  hours. 

For  added  qualities  of  seeming  indifference 
to  externals  in  the  midst  of  great  and  stirring 
exertions,  see  the  artillerymen  who  serve  with 
the  heavies.  Generally  things  are  fairly  lively 
among  those  dainty,  darling,  death-dealing  pets 
that  are  called  the  75 's.  Under  their  camou- 
flaging they  look  like  speckled  pups  when  they 
do  not  look  like  spotted  circus  ponies.  It  is  a 
brisksome  and  a  heartening  thing  to  see  how 
fast  a  crew  of  Frenchmen  can  serve  a  battery  of 
these  little  pintos,  feeding  the  three-inch  shells 
into  the  pieces  with  such  celerity  that  at  a  dis- 
tance the  reports  merge  together  so  one  might 

[  324  ] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


almost  imagine  he  heard  the  voice  of  an  over- 
grown machine  gun  speaking,  instead  of  the 
intermingled  voices  of  five  separate  trouble 
makers.  Near  Compiegne  one  day  I  watched 
a  battery  of  75 's  at  work  on  the  Germans 
advancing  in  mass  formation,  I  keeping  count 
of  the  reports;  and  the  average  number  of 
shots  per  minute  per  gun  was  twelve. 

But  the  heavies  work  more  slowly,  and  their 
crews  have  a  sluggish  look  about  them  as 
befitting  men  who  do  their  fighting  all  at  long 
range  and  never  see  the  foe;  though  I  suspect 
the  underlying  reason  to  be  that  they  have 
learned  to  combine  the  maximum  of  eifficiency 
and  of  accuracy  with  the  minimum  of  apparent 
effort  and  the  minimum  of  apparent  enthu- 
siasm. Particularly  is  this  to  be  said  in  cases 
where  the  gunners  have  become  expert  through 
long  practice. 

On  the  Montdidier  Front  on  a  gloriously 
beautiful  afternoon  of  early  summer  I  kept 
company  for  two  hours  with  three  French 
batteries  of  155's.  The  guns  were  ranged  in 
dirt  emplacements  under  a  bank  alongside  a 
sunken  road  that  meandered  out  from  the 
main  street  of  a  village  that  was  empty  except 
for  American  and  French  soldiers.  The  Ger- 
mans were  four  miles  away,  beyond  a  ridge  of 
low  hills.  By  climbing  to  the  crest  of  the 
nearermost  rise  and  lying  there  in  the  rank 
grass  and  looking  through  glasses  one  could 
make  out  the  German  lines.     Without  glasses 

[  325  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

one  could  mark  fairly  well  where  the  shells 
from  our  side  fell.  But  during  the  time  I  stayed 
there  no  single  man  among  the  artillerymen 
manifested  any  desire  whatsoever  to  ascertain 
the  visible  effects  of  his  handiwork. 

Over  the  ground  telephone  an  order  would 
come  from  somewhere  or  other,  miles  away. 
The  officer  in  command  of  one  of  the  batteries 
would  sing  out  the  order  to  fire  so  many  rounds 
at  such  and  such  intervals.  The  angles — the 
deflections  for  charge  temperature,  air  tempera- 
ture, barometer  pressure  and  wind — had  all 
been  worked  out  earlier  in  the  day,  and  a  few 
corrections  for  range  were  required.  So  all 
the  men  had  to  do  was  to  fire  the  guns.  And 
that  literally  was  all  that  they  did  do. 

Not  all  the  explosions  in  that  immediate 
vicinity  were  caused  by  "departs,"  either. 
Occasionally  there  were  to  be  heard  the  un- 
mistakable whistle  and  roar  and  the  ultimate 
crack  of  an  "arrive,"  for  the  Germans'  counter- 
batteries  did  not  remain  silent  under  the 
punishment  the  French  were  dealing  out.  But 
when  an  arrive  fell  anywhere  within  eye  range 
the  men  barely  turned  their  heads  to  see  the 
column  of  earth  and  dust  and  pulverised  chalk- 
rock  go  geysering  up  into  the  air.  It  was  only 
by  chance  I  found  out  an  enemy  shell  had  fallen 
that  morning  among  a  gun  crew  stationed  near 
the  westerly  end  of  the  line  of  guns,  perhaps  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  away,  and  had  blown  seven 
men  to  bits  and  wounded  as  many  more. 

[  326  ] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


Still,  this  apathy  with  regard  to  the  potential 
consequences  of  being  where  an  arrive  bursts  is 
not  confined  to  the  gunners.  When  one  has 
had  opportunity  to  see  how  many  shells  fall 
without  doing  any  damage  to  human  beings, 
and  to  figure  out  for  oneself  how  many  tons 
of  metal  it  takes  to  kill  a  man,  one  likewise 
acquires  a  measure  of  this  same  apparent  non- 
chalance. 

For  sheer  sang-froid  it  would  be  hard  to 
match  those  whose  work  I  watched  that  day. 
In  intervals  of  activity  they  lounged  under 
the  gun  wheels,  smoking  and  playing  card 
games;  and  when  one  battery  was  playing 
and  another  temporarily  was  silent  the  members 
of  the  idle  battery  paid  absolutely  no  heed  to 
the  work  of  their  fellows. 

In  two  hours  just  one  thing  and  only  one 
thing  occurred  to  jostle  them  out  of  their  calm. 
Something  mysterious  and  very  grievous  befell 
a  half-grown  dog,  which,  having  been  aban- 
doned or  forgotten  by  his  owners,  still  lived 
on  in  the  ruins  of  the  town  and  foraged  for 
scraps  among  the  mess  kitchens.  Down  the 
road  past  the  guns  came  the  pup,  ki-yiing  his 
troubles  as  he  ran;  and  at  the  sound  of  his 
poignant  yelps  some  of  the  gunners  quit  their 
posts  and  ran  out  into  the  road,  and  one  of 
them  gathered  up  the  poor  beastie  in  his  arms 
and  a  dozen  more  clustered  about  offering  the 
consolation  of  pats  and  soothing  words  to  the 
afflicted    thing.     Presently    under    this    treat- 

[327] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

ment  he  forgot  what  ailed  him,  and  then  the 
men  went  back  to  their  places,  discussing  the 
affair  with  many  gestures  and  copious  speech. 
Ten  German  shells  plumping  down  near  by 
would  not  have  created  half  so  much  excite- 
ment as  the  woes  of  one  ownerless  doggie  had 
created.  I  said  to  myself  that  if  the  incident 
was  typically  French,  likewise  it  was  typical  of 
what  might  be  called  the  war  temperament  as 
exemplified  among  veteran  fighters. 

I  should  add,  merely  to  fill  out  the  settings 
of  the  scene,  that  scarcely  was  there  a  ten- 
minute  interlude  this  day  in  which  German 
observation  planes  did  not  scout  over  our  lines 
or  French  observation  planes  did  not  scout 
over  theirs.  Sometimes  only  a  single  plane 
would  be  visible,  but  more  often  the  airmen 
moved  in  squadron  formations.  Each  time 
of  course  that  a  plane  ventured  aloft  its  coursing 
flight  across  the  heavens  would  be  marked  by 
bursting  pompons  of  downy  white  or  black 
smoke — white  for  shrapnel  and  black  for 
explosive  bursts — where  the  antiaircraft  guns 
of  one  side  or  the  other  took  wing  shots  at  the 
pesky  intruder.  One  time  six  sky  voyagers  were 
up  simultaneously.  Another  time  ten,  and 
still  another  no  less  than  sixteen  might  be 
counted  at  once.  But  to  focus  the  attention 
of  any  of  the  persons  then  upon  the  earth 
below,  an  aerial  combat  between  the  two 
groups  would  have  been  required,  and  even 
this  spectacle — which  at  the  first  time  of  wit- 

[  328  ] 


WAR    AS    IT    isn't 


nessing  it  is  almost  the  most  stirring  isolated 
event  that  military  operations  have  to  offer — 
very  soon,  with  daily  repetitions,  becomes  al- 
most commonplace,  as  I  myself  can  testify. 
War  itself  is  too  big  a  thing  for  one  detached 
detail  of  it  to  count  in  the  estimates  that  one 
tries  to  form  of  the  whole  thing.  It  takes  a 
charge  in  force  over  the  top  or  something 
equally  vivid  and  spectacular  to  whet  up  the 
jaded  mentality  of  the  onlooker. 


[  329  ] 


CHAPTER  XX 
THE  CALL  OF  THE  CUCKOO 


SEEKING  for  the  thrills  that  experience 
had  taught  me  would  nevertheless  prob- 
ably not  be  forthcoming  anywhere  in 
this  so-called  quiet  sector,  I  went  that 
same  day  with  a  young  American  officer  to  a 
forward  post  of  command,  which  was  another 
name  for  a  screened  pit  dug  in  the  scalp  of  a 
fair-sized  hillock,  immediately  behind  our  fore- 
most rifle  pits.  Sitting  here  upon  the  tops  of 
our  steel  helmets,  which  the  same  make  fairly 
good  perches  to  sit  on  when  the  ground  is 
muddied,  we  could  look  through  periscope 
glasses  right  into  the  courtyard  of  a  wrecked 
chateau  held  by  the  enemy.  Upon  this  spot 
some  of  the  guns  behind  us  were  playing  indus- 
triously. We  could  see  where  the  shells  struck 
— now  in  the  garden,  now  near  the  shattered 
outbuildings,  now  ripping  away  a  slice  of  the 
front  walls  or  a  segment  of  the  roof  of  the 
chateau  itself;  and  we  could  see  too,  after  the 
dust  of  each  hit  had  somewhat  lifted,  the  small 
gray  figures  of  Germans  scurrying  about  like 
startled  ants. 

[  330] 


THE    CALL    OF    THE    CUCKOO 

A  mile  away,  about,  were  those  Germans, 
and  yet  to  all  intents  and  purposes  they  might 
have  been  twenty  miles  away;  for  as  things 
stood,  and  with  the  forces  that  they  had  at  this 
point,  it  w^ould  have  taken  them  days  or  per- 
haps weeks  to  bridge  the  gap  between  their 
lines  and  ours,  and  it  would  have  taken  us  as 
long  to  get  to  where  they  were.  For  you  see 
both  forces  had  abundance  of  artillery,  but 
each  was  holding  its  front  lines  with  small 
groups  of  infantry.  To  sit  there  and  peer  into 
their  defences  was  like  looking  into  a  distant 
planet  peopled  by  men  thinking  different 
thoughts  from  ours,  and  swayed  by  different 
ambitions  and  moved  by  impulses  all  running 
counter  to  those  of  our  breed. 

Nevertheless,  I  must  confess  that  the  sensa- 
tion of  crouching  in  that  hole  in  the  ground, 
spying  upon  the  movements  of  those  dwellers 
of  that  other  small  world,  while  high  above  us 
the  shells  passed  over,  shrieking  their  war- 
whoops  as  they  travelled  from  or  toward  our 
back  lines,  very  soon  lost  for  me  the  savour 
of  interest,  just  as  it  had  lost  it  a  month  before 
when  I  did  the  same  thing  in  front  of  Noyon, 
or  two  weeks  before  near  Verdun,  or  as  after- 
ward it  was  to  do  when  I  repeated  the  experience 
near  Rheims. 

So  after  a  bit  my  companion  and  I  fell  to 
enjoying  the  beauties  of  the  day.  In  front 
of  us  lay  a  strip  of  gentle  pasture  slope  not 
badly  marred  by  shell  craters,  and  all  green 

[  331  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

except  where  lovely  wide  slashes  of  a  bright 
yellow  flower  cut  across  it  like  rifts  of  fallen 
sunshine.  The  lower  reaches  of  air  were  filled 
with  the  humming  of  bees,  and  every  minute 
the  skylarks  went  singing  up  into  the  soft 
skies  as  though  filled  with  a  curiosity  to  find 
out  what  those  wailing  demons  that  sped  criss- 
crossing through  the  heavens  might  be. 
Presently  from  a  thicket  behind  us  sounded 
a  bell-like  bird  note  with  a  sort  of  melodious 
cluck  in  it.  I  had  never  heard  that  note 
before  except  when  uttered  by  wooden  clocks 
of  presumably  Swiss  manufacture,  but  I  recog- 
nised it  for  what  it  was. 

"Listen,"  said  my  companion:  "that's  the 
second  time  within  a  week  I've  heard  it.  A 
French  liaison  officer  was  with  me  then,  and 
he  said  that  for  three  years  now  the  cuckoo 
had  been  silent,  and  he  said  that  the  French 
country  people  believed  that  since  the  cuckoo 
had  begun  calling  again  it  was  a  sign  the  war 
would  soon  be  over — that  the  cuckoo  was 
calling  for  peace  on  earth." 

I  wonder  if  he  was  right,"  I  said. 
Well,  he  was  right  so  far  as  he  personally 
was  concerned.  This  war  for  him  was  nearly 
over.  Night  before  last  he  was  riding  back  to 
division  headquarters  in  a  side  car,  and  a  shell 
dropped  on  him  at  a  crossroads  and  he  and 
the  driver  were  killed." 

We  sat  a  minute  or  two  longer  and  nothing 
was  said. 

[332] 


THE    CALL    OF    THE    CUCKOO 

"Well,"  he  said  at  length,  "if  you've  had 
enough  of  this  we'll  be  getting  back.  It 
isn't  very  much  of  a  show,  once  a  fellow  gets 
used  to  it,  and  I  guess  the  major  will  have 
supper  ready  for  us  pretty  soon.  Ready  to 
go? 

We  got  up  cautiously  and  put  our  helmets 
on  the  proper  ends  of  us  and  started  back 
through  the  shallow  communication  trench 
leading  to  the  village. 

"Being  where  you  can  look  right  across  and 
down  into  the  German  lines  makes  a  fellow 
wonder,"  I  suggested.  "It  makes  a  fellow 
wonder  what  those  men  over  yonder  are 
thinking  about  and  what  their  feelings  toward 
us  are,  and  whether  they  hate  us  as  deeply  as 
thev  hate  the  British." 

"I  guess  I  can  figure  out  what  one  of  them 
thinks  anyhow,"  he  said  with  a  quizzical  side- 
wise  glance  at  me.  He  flirted  over  his  shoulder 
with  his  thumb.  "I've  got  a  brother  some- 
where over  yonder  ways — if  he's  alive."  He 
smiled  at  the  look  that  must  have  come  across 
my  face.  "Oh,  you  needn't  suspect  me,"  he 
went  on.  "I  judge  I'm  as  good  an  American 
as  you  are  or  any  man  alive  is,  even  if  I 
do  wear  a  German  name.  You  see  I'm  a 
youngest  son.  I  was  born  in  the  good  old 
U.  S.  A.  all  right  enough,  but  two  of  my 
brothers,  older  than  I  am,  were  born  in  Ger- 
many, and  they  didn't  come  to  America  when 
the  rest  of  the  family  migrated.     And  one  of 

[  333  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

them,  last  time  I  heard  from  him.  before  we 
got  into  the  mess,  was  a  heutenant  in  a  Bavar- 
ian field  battery.  Being  a  German  subject  I 
suppose  he  figures  he's  only  doing  his  duty,  but 
how  he  can  go  on  fighting  for  that  swine  of  a 
Kaiser  beats  me.  But  then,  I  don't  suppose  I 
can  understand;  I'm  an  American  citizen. 
Funny  world,  isn't  it.^ 

"Say,  listen!  That  cuckoo  is  calling  again. 
I  wonder  if  there  is  anything  in  the  superstition 
of  the  French  peasants  that  peace  will  come  this 
year.  Well,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned  I  don't 
want  it  to  come  until  Uncle  Sam  has  finished  up 
this  job  in  the  right  way.  I  only  hope  the  next 
time  I  hear  the  cuckoo  sing  it'll  be  in  the  out- 
skirts of  Berlin — that  is,  providing  a  cuckoo  can 
stand  for  the  outskirts  of  Berlin." 

I  reminded  him  that  the  cuckoo  was  a  bird 
that  stole  other  bird's  nests — or  tried  to. 

"That  being  so,  I  guess  Berlin  must  be  full 
of  'em,"  said  he. 

The  major's  headquarters — he  was  a  major 
of  artillery — was  in  the  chief  house  of  the  little 
town.  Curiously  enough  this  was  almost  the 
only  house  in  the  town  that  had  not  been  hit, 
and  two  days  later  it  was  hit,  and  in  the  ruins 
of  it  a  friend  of  mine,  another  major,  was 
crushed ;  but  that  is  a  different  story,  not  to  be 
detailed  here.  It  stood — the  house,  I  mean — 
in  a  little  square  courtyard  of  its  own,  as  most 
village  houses  in  this  part  of  France  do,  being 
flanked  on  one  side  by  its  stable  and  on  the 

[  334] 


THE    CALL    OF    THE    CUCKOO 

other  side  by  its  cow  barn  and  by  its  chicken 
houses.  There  was  a  high  wall  to  inclose  it 
along  the  side  nearest  the  street,  with  rabbit 
hutches  and  pigeon  cots  tucked  up  under  the 
wall.  In  the  centre  of  the  court  was  a  midden 
for  manure.  It  had  been  a  cosy  little  place 
once.  The  dwelling  was  of  red  brick  with  a 
gay  tiled  roof,  and  the  lesser  buildings  and 
the  wall  were  built  of  stones,  as  is  the  French 
way.  Even  the  rabbit  hutches  were  stone,  and 
the  dovecot  and  the  cuddy  for  the  fowls.  Now, 
except  for  American  artillerymen,  it  was  all 
empty  of  life.  The  paved  yard  was  littered 
with  wreckage;  the  doors  of  the  empty  cubicles 
stood  open. 

I  sat  with  the  major  and  his  adjutant  on 
the  doorstep  of  the  cottage  waiting  for  the 
orderlies  to  call  us  in  to  eat  our  suppers. 
Through  the  lolled  gate  in  the  wall  an  old  man, 
a  civilian,  entered.  He  was  tall  and  lean  like 
one  of  the  lombard  trees  growing  in  the  spoiled 
vegetable  garden  at  the  back  of  the  house,  and 
he  was  dressed  in  a  long  frock  coat  that  was  all 
powdered  with  a  white  dust  of  the  roads.  He 
had  a  grave  long  face,  and  we  saw  that  he 
limped  a  little  as  he  came  across  the  close 
toward  us.  Nearing  us  he  took  off  his  hat  and 
bowed. 

Pardon,  'sieurs, "  he  said  in  Norman  French, 
but  could  I  look  through  this  house.^" 

No  civilians  are  permitted  here  now,"  said 
the  major.     "How  did  you  get  here?" 

I  ^^5  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


I  was  given  a  pass  to  return, "  he  explained. 
Your  pardon  again,  m'sieurs,  but  I  am — I 
was — the  mayor  of  this  town,  and  this  is  my 
house.  I  mean,  it  was  my  house.  The  Ger- 
mans came  upon  us  so  rapidly  we  had  to  leave 
on  but  two  hours'  notice,  taking  with  us  very 
little.  Not  until  to-day  could  I  secure  leave 
to  come  back.  I  wished  to  see  what  was  left 
of  my  home — I  always  had  lived  here  before, 
you  know — and  to  gather  up  some  of  my  be- 
longings, if  I  might. " 

*'  Where  did  you  come  from  ?  "  asked  the  major. 

"From . "  He  named  a  town  twenty- 
two  miles  away. 

"And  how  did  you  get  here?" 

*'I  walked."  He  lifted  his  shoulders  in  an 
expressive  gesture.  "There  was  no  other  way. 
And  I  must  walk  back  to-night.  There  is  no 
shelter  nearer  except  for  soldiers." 

He  looked  past  us  into  the  main  room  of 
the  house.  Its  floor  of  tiles  was  littered  with 
dried  mud.  A  table  and  three  broken  chairs 
that  had  given  way  beneath  the  weight  of  heavy 
and  careless  men  were  its  only  furniture  now. 
The  window  panes  had  been  shattered.  It  was 
hard  to  picture  that  this  once  had  been  a  cozy, 
comfortable  room,  clean  and  tidy,  smartened 
with  pictures  and  ornaments  upon  the  walls 
and  with  curtains  at  the  casement  openings, 
which  now  gaped  so  emptily. 

"Not  much  is  left,  eh?"  said  the  old  man, 
his  face  twitching.     "Well  c'est  la  guerre!" 

I  32^  ] 


THE    CALL    OF    THE    CUCKOO 

"I'm  afraid  your  home  is  rather  badly 
wrecked,"  said  the  major.  "Since  I  came  here 
my  men  have  tried  to  do  no  more  damage  to  it 
than  they  could  help,  but  Algerians  were  here 
before  us;  and  the  Algerians,  as  you  know,  are 
rough  in  their  habits  and  sometimes  they  loot 
houses.  Do  3^ou  wish  to  enter?  If  so,  go  ahead. 
And  if  you  are  hungry  I  would  be  glad  to  have 
you  stay  and  eat  with  us." 

The  stranger  hesitated  a  moment. 

"No,  no,"  be  said;  "of  what  use  to  go  in.'* 
I  have  seen  enough.  And  thank  you,  m'sieur 
but  I  do  not  wish  anv  food. " 

He  bowed  once  more  and  turned  away  from 
us;  but  he  did  not  go  away  directly.  He  went 
across  the  court  to  his  barn  and  tugged  at  a 
door  that  was  half  ajar.  From  within  came 
the  grumbled  protest  of  a  Yankee  gunner 
lying  just  inside  on  a  pile  of  straw,  and  indignant 
at  being  roused  from  a  nap. 

The  man  who  owned  the  barn  backed  away, 
making  his  apologies.  He  picked  up  a  hay 
fork  that  lay  upon  the  dungpile,  and  near  the 
gate,  under  the  shadow  of  the  wall,  he  stooped 
again  and  picked  up  a  broken  clock  that  some 
one  had  tossed  out  of  the  house.  Then,  after 
one  more  glance  all  about  the  place  as  though 
he  strove  to  fix  in  his  mind  a  picture  of  it,  not 
as  now  it  was  but  as  once  it  had  been,  he 
stepped  through  the  gate,  and  with  his  pitiable 
salvage  tucked  under  his  bony  arms  he  vanished 
up  the  road. 

[337] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

When  that  night  I  summed  up  my  experiences 
the  memories  of  the  day  that  stood  out  clearest 
in  my  mind  were  not  of  the  guns  nor  the 
aeroplanes  nor  the  bursting  shells  nor  yet  the 
sight  in  the  German  lines,  but  of  the  mistreated 
dog  that  howled  and  of  the  cuckoo  that  fluted 
in  the  thicket  and  of  the  old  man  who  had 
trudged  so  far,  over  perilous  roads,  to  look 
with  his  eyes  for  the  last  time,  surely,  upon  the 
sorry  ruination  of  his  home.  And  I  felt  that  I, 
a  man  whose  business  it  is  to  see  interesting 
things  and  afterward  to  put  them  down  in 
black  and  white,  was  acquiring  in  some  degree 
the  perspective  of  the  soldier,  whose  mental 
viewpoint  is  so  foreshortened  by  the  imminent 
presence  of  the  greater  phases  of  war  that  he 
comes  after  a  while  to  regard  the  inconse- 
quential, and  so  looks  on  the  incidental  phases 
of  it  as  of  more  account  than  the  complexities 
of  its  vast,  hurrying,  overdriven  mechanism. 

For  the  point  I  have  been  trying,  perhaps 
clumsily,  to  make  clear  all  along  is  just  this: 
As  a  general  thing  it  may  be  set  down  that 
except  for  those  infrequent  occasions  when 
there  is  a  charge  to  be  made  or  a  charge  to  be 
repelled,  or  except  when  some  freak  of  war, 
new  to  the  trooper's  experience,  is  occurring 
or  has  just  occurred,  he  in  all  essential  outer 
regards  is  exactly  the  same  person  that  he  was 
before  he  went  a-soldiering,  with  nothing  about 
him  to  distinguish  him  from  what  he  was  then, 
barring  the  fact  that  now  he  wears  a  uniform. 

[338  ] 


THE    CALL    OF    THE    CUCKOO 

Spiritually  he  may  have  been  transformed; 
indeed  he  must  have  been,  but  it  is  a  shading 
of  spirituality  that  but  rarely  betrays  itself  in 
his  fashion  of  speech  or  in  his  physical  expres- 
sion or  in  his  behaviour.  Doing  the  most 
heroic  things  he  nevertheless  does  them  with- 
out indulging  in  any  of  the  heroics  with  which 
the  fiction  of  books  and  the  fiction  of  stagecraft 
love  to  invest  the  display  of  the  finer  and  the 
higher  emotions  of  mankind. 

Living  where  death  in  various  guises  is  ever 
upon  the  stalk  for  him  he  learns  to  regard  it 
no  more  than  in  civil  life  he  regards  the  com- 
moner manifestations  of  a  code  of  civilised 
procedure  that  ethically  is  based  upon  a  plan 
to  safeguard  his  life  and  his  limb  from  mis- 
chance and  ill  health.  The  habit  of  death 
becomes  to  him  as  commonplace  as  the  habit 
of  life  once  was.  He  gets  used  to  the  in- 
credible and  it  turns  commonplace.  He  gets 
used  to  the  extraordinary,  which  after  it  has 
happened  a  few  times  becomes  most  ordinary. 
He  gets  used  to  being  bombed  and  is  bored 
thereby;  gets  used  to  gas  alarms  and  bombard- 
ments; to  high  explosives,  spewing  shrapnel,  and 
purring  bullets;  gets  used  to  eating  his  meals 
standing  up  and  taking  his  rest  in  broken  bits. 
He  gets  used  to  all  of  war's  programme — its  im- 
possibilities and  its  contradictions,  its  splendours, 
its  horrors  and  its  miseries.  In  short  he  gets 
used  to  living  in  a  world  that  is  turned  entirely 
upside  dov/n,  with  every  normal  aspect  in  it 

[  339] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

capsised  and  every  regular  and  ordained  phase 
of  it  standing  upon  its  head. 

For  a  fact  it  seems  to  me  that  in  its  final 
analysis  the  essence  of  war  is  merely  the  knack 
of  getting  used  to  war.  And  the  instantaneous 
response  of  the  average  human  being  to  its 
monstrous  and  preposterous  aspects  is  a  lesson 
to  prove  the  elasticity  and  the  infinite  adapt- 
ability of  the  human  mind.  Because  people 
can  and  do  get  used  to  it  is  the  reason  why 
they  do  not  all  go  mad  in  the  midst  of  it. 
Getting  used  to  it — that's  the  answer.  After  a 
while  one  even  gets  used  to  the  phenomenon 
that  war  rarely  or  never  looks  as  you  would 
think  war  should  look — and  that  brings  me  by  a 
roundabout  way  back  again  to  the  main  text 
of  my  article. 

Troops  travelling  in  numbers  across  country 
do  not  present  the  majestic  panoramic  effect 
that  one  might  expect.  This  in  part,  though, 
is  due  to  the  common  topography  of  France. 
Generally  speaking,  a  given  district  is  so  cut  up 
with  roads  threading  the  fields  that  the  forces, 
for  convenience  in  handling,  are  divided  into 
short  columns  that  move  by  routes  that  are 
practically  parallel,  toward  a  common  desti- 
nation. The  sight  of  troops  going  into  camp  at 
night  also  is  disappointing.  In  France,  thickly 
settled  as  it  is,  with  villages  tucked  into  every 
convenient  dip  between  the  hills,  the  men  are 
so  rapidly  swallowed  up  in  the  billeting  spaces 
under  house  and  barn  roots  that  an  hour  or 

[  340  ] 


THE    CALL    OF    THE    CUCKOO 

even  half  an  hour  after  the  march  has  ended 
you  might  traverse  a  district  where,  let  us  say, 
twenty  thousand  soldiers  are  quartered,  and 
unless  you  know  the  correct  figures  the  evidence 
offered  to  your  eyes  might  deceive  you  into 
assuming  that  not  one-tenth  of  that  number 
were  anywhere  in  the  vicinity. 

It  is  this  failure  of  war,  when  considered  as  a 
physical  thing,  to  measure  up  to  its  traditional 
impressiveness,  that  fills  with  despair  the  soul  of 
the  writing  man,  who  craves  to  put  down  on 
paper  an  adequate  conception  of  it  in  its 
entirety.  Finally  he  comes  to  this:  That 
either  he  must  throw  away  the  delusions  he 
himself  nourished  and  content  himself  by 
building  together  little  mosaics  with  scraps 
gleaned  from  the  big,  untellable,  untrans- 
latable enigma  that  it  is,  or  for  the  reader's 
sake  must  try  to  conjure  up  a  counterfeit  con- 
ception, which  will  correspond  with  what  he 
knows  the  average  reader's  mental  vision  of 
the  thing  to  be.  In  one  event  he  is  honest — but 
disappointing.  In  the  other  he  is  guilty  of  a 
willful  deceit,  but  probably  turns  out  copy 
that  is  satisfying  to  his  audience.  In  either 
event,  in  his  heart  he  is  bound  to  realise  the 
utter  impossibility  of  depicting  war  as  it  is. 

It  is  one  of  the  cumulating  paradoxes  of 
the  entire  paradoxical  procedure  that  the  best 
place  to  get  a  reasonably  clear  and  intelligible 
idea  of  the  swing  and  scope  of  a  battle  is  not 
upon  the  site  of   the  battle  itself,   but  in  a 

[  341  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

place  anywhere  from  ten  to  twenty  miles  behind 
the  battle.  Directly  at  the  front  the  onlooker 
observes  only  those  small  segments  of  the 
prevalent  hostilities  that  lie  directly  under  his 
eyes.  He  is  hedged  in  and  hampered  by 
obstacles;  his  vision  is  circumscribed  and  con- 
fined to  what  may  be  presented  in  his  immediate 
vicinity. 

Of  course  there  are  exceptions  to  this  rule. 
I  am  speaking  not  of  every  case  but  of  the 
average  case. 

A  fairish  distance  back,  though,  he  may  to  an 
extent  grasp  the  immensity  of  the  operation. 
He  sees  the  hammered  troops  coming  out  and 
the  fresh  troops  going  in;  beholds  the  move- 
ments of  munitions  and  supplies  and  reserves; 
observes  the  handling  of  the  wounded;  notes 
the  provisions  that  are  made  for  a  possible 
advance  and  the  preparations  that  have  been 
made  for  a  possible  retreat.  Even  so,  to  the 
uninitiated  eye  the  scheme  appears  jumbled, 
haphazard  and  altogether  confused.  It  re- 
quires a  mind  acquainted  with  more  than  the 
rudiments  of  military  science  to  discern  pur- 
pose in  what  primarily  appears  to  be  so  abso- 
lutely purposeless.  There  is  nothing  of  the 
checkerboard  about  it;  the  orderliness  of  a 
chess  game  is  lacking.  The  suggestion  is  more 
that  of  a  whirlpool.  So  it  follows  that  the 
novice  watches  only  the  maelstrom  on  the 
surface  and  rarely  can  he  fathom  out  the 
guiding  influences  that  ordain  that  each  twisti- 

[342] 


THE    CALL    OF    THE    CUCKOO 

wise  current  moves  in  its  proper  channel  without 
impairment  or  impediment  for  any  one  of  the 
myriad  of  related  activities. 

Being  a  novice  he  is  astonished  to  note  that 
only  infrequently  do  wounded  men  act  as  his 
fictional  reading  has  led  him  to  believe  they 
would  act.  To  me  the  most  astounding  thing 
about  this  has  been  not  that  wounded  men 
shriek  and  moan,  but  that  nearly  always  they 
are  so  terribly  silent.  At  the  moment  of 
receiving  his  hurt  a  man  may  cry  out;  often  he 
does.  But  oftener  than  not  he  comes,  mute 
and  composed,  to  the  dressing  station.  The 
example  of  certain  men  who  lock  their  lips  and 
refuse  to  murmur,  no  matter  how  great  is  their 
pain,  inspires  the  rest  to  do  likewise.  A  man 
who  in  civil  life  would  make  a  great  pother 
over  a  trivial  mishap,  in  service  will  endure  an 
infinitely  worse  one  without  complaint.  If  war 
brings  out  all  the  vices  in  some  nations  it  most 
surely  brings  out  the  virtues  in  others.  I 
hate  to  think  back  on  the  number  of  freshly 
wounded  men  I  have  seen,  but  when  I  do 
think  back  on  it  I  am  struck  by  the  fact  that 
barring  a  few  who  were  delirious  and  some  few 
more  who  were  just  emerging  into  agonised 
consciousness  following  the  coma  shock  of  a 
bad  injury,  I  can  count  upon  the  fingers  of  my 
two  hands  the  total  of  those  who  screamed  or 
loudly  groaned.  Men  well  along  the  road  to 
recovery  frequently  make  more  troublesome 
patients  than  those  who  have  just  been  brought 

[  343  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

to  the  field  hospitals;  and  a  man  who  perhaps 
has  lain  for  hours  with  a  great  hole  in  his 
flesh,  stoically  awaiting  his  turn  under  the 
surgeon's  hands,  will  sometimes,  as  a  con- 
valescent, worry  and  fret  over  the  prospect  of 
having  his  hurts  redressed. 

Among  certain  races  the  newly  stricken 
trooper  is  more  apt  to  be  concerned  by  the 
fear  that  he  may  be  incapacitated  from  getting 
back  into  the  game  than  he  is  about  the  extent 
of  his  wound  or  the  possibility  that  he  may  die 
of  it.  As  an  American  I  am  proud  to  be  able 
to  say,  speaking  as  a  first-hand  witness,  that 
our  own  race  should  be  notably  included  in  this 
category.  The  Irishman  who  had  been  shot 
five  times  but  was  morally  certain  he  would 
recover  and  return  to  the  war  because  he 
thought  he  knew  the  fellow  who  had  plugged 
him  has  his  counterpart  without  number  among 
the  valorous  lads  from  this  side  of  the  ocean 
whose  names  have  appeared  on  the  casualty 
lists. 


[  344  J 


y' 


CHAPTER  XXI 
PARADOXES  BEHIND  THE  LINES 

WHILE  I  am  on  the  subject  of 
unusual  phases  of  modern  warfare 
I  should  like  to  include  just  one 
more  thing  in  the  list — and  that 
thing  is  the  suddenness  with  which  in  France, 
and  likewise  in  Belgium,  one  in  going  forward 
passes  out  of  an  area  of  peacefulness  into  an 
area  of  devastation  and  destruction.  Almost 
invariably  the  transition  is  accomplished  with 
a  startling  abruptness.  It  is  as  though  a 
mighty  finger  had  scored  a  line  across  the  face 
of  the  land  and  said:  "On  this  side  of  the  line 
life  shall  go  on  as  it  always  has  gone  on.  Here 
men  shall  plough,  and  women  shall  weave,  and 
children  shall  play,  and  the  ordinary  affairs 
of  mankind  shall  progress  with  the  seasons. 
On  that  side  there  shall  be  only  death  and  the 
proofs  of  death  and  the  promises  of  yet  more 
deaths.  There  the  fields  shall  be  given  over 
to  the  raven  and  the  rat;  the  homes  shall  be 
blasted  flat,  the  towns  shall  be  razed  and 
the  earth  shall  be  made  a  charnelhouse  and  a 

[  345  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

lazar  pit  of  all  that  is  foul  and  loathsome  and 
abominable  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man. " 

For  emphasis  of  this  sharp  contrast  you 
have  only  to  take  a  motor  run  up  out  of  a 
district  as  yet  untouched  by  war  into  the 
scathed  zone  of  past  or  present  combat.  By 
preference  I  should  elect  for  you  that  the 
trip  be  made  through  a  British  sector,  because 
the  British  have  a  way  of  stamping  their  racial 
individuality  upon  an  area  that  they  take  over — 
they  Anglicise  it,  so  to  speak.  Besides,  a 
tour  through  British-held  territory  partakes  of 
the  nature  of  a  flying  visit  to  an  ethnological 
congress,  seeing  that  nearly  all  the  peoples  who 
make  up  the  empire  are  likely  to  have  represen- 
tatives here  present,  engaged  in  one  capacity 
or  another — and  that  adds  interest  and  colour 
to  the  picture. 

Let  us  start,  say,  from  a  French  market 
town  on  a  market  day.  From  far  away  in  the 
north,  as  we  climb  into  our  car  with  our  soldier 
driver  and  our  officer  escort,  comes  the  faint 
hollow  rumble  of  the  great  guns;  but  that  has 
been  going  on  nearly  four  years  now,  and  in  the 
monotony  of  it  the  people  who  live  here  have 
forgotten  the  threat  that  is  in  that  distant 
thundering.  Pippin-cheeked  women  are  driving 
in,  perched  upon  the  high  seats  of  two-wheeled 
hooded  carts  and  bringing  with  them  fowls 
and  garden  truck.  In  the  square  before  the 
church  booths  are  being  set  up  for  the  sale  of 
goods.     Plump  round-eyed   children  stand   to 

[346] 


PARADOXES    BEHIND    THE    LINES 

watch  us  go  down  the  narrow  street,  which 
runs  between  close  rows  of  wattled,  gable-ended 
stone  or  plaster  cottages.  Most  of  the  little 
girls  are  minding  babies;  practically  all  of 
the  little  boys  wear  black  pinafores  belted  in 
at  their  chubby  waistlines,  with  soldier  cap — 
always  soldier  caps — on  their  heads,  and  they 
love  to  stiffen  to  attention  and  salute  the 
occupants  of  a  military  automobile. 

There  are  but  few  men  in  sight,  and  these 
are  old  men  or  else  they  wear  uniforms.  The 
houses  are  tidied  and  neat;  the  soil,  every 
tillable  inch  of  it,  is  in  a  state  of  intensive  and 
painstaking  cultivation.  On  all  hands  vine- 
yards, orchards,  pastures  and  grain  fields  are 
spread  in  squares  and  parallelograms.  The 
road  is  bordered  on  either  side  by  tall  fine  trees. 
Chickens,  geese  and  turkeys  scuttle  away  to 
safety  from  before  the  onrushing  car,  and  at 
the  roadside  goats  and  cattle  and  sheep  and 
sometimes  swine  are  feeding.  Each  animal  or 
each  group  of  animals  has  its  attendant  herder. 
Horses  are  tethered  outside  the  hedges  where 
they  may  crop  the  free  herbage.  The  land- 
scape is  fecund  with  life  and  productivity. 

It  is  a  splendid  road  along  which  we  course, 
wide  and  smooth  and  well-kept,  and  for  this 
the  reason  is  presently  made  plain.  Steam 
rollers  of  British  manufacture,  with  soldiers 
to  steer  them,  constantly  roll  back  and  forth 
over  stretches  where  broken  stone  has  been 
spread  by  the  repair  gangs.     These  mending 

[347] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

crews  may  be  made  up  of  soldiers — French, 
British,  Portuguese  or  Italians;  and  then  again 
they  may  be  drafts  of  German  prisoners  or 
members  of  labour  squads  drawn  from  far 
corners  of  the  world  where  the  British  or  the 
French  flag  flies.  Within  an  hour  you  will 
pass  turbaned  East  Indians,  Chinamen,  Arabs, 
Nubians,  Ceylonese,  Senegalese,  Maoris,  Afri- 
dis,  Moroccans,  Algerians.  Their  head-dresses 
are  likely  to  be  their  own;  for  the  rest  they 
wear  the  uniforms  of  the  nation  that  has  en- 
listed or  hired  them. 

Despite  this  polyglot  commingling  of  types 
the  British  influence  is  upon  everything. 
Military  guideposts  bearing  explicit  directions 
in  English  stand  thick  along  the  wayside,  and 
in  the  windows  of  the  shops  are  cruder  signs  to 
show  that  the  French  proprietors  make  a 
specialty  of  catering  to  the  wants  of  Britishers. 
Here  is  one  reading  "Eggs  and  Potato  Chips"; 
there  one  advertising  to  whom  it  may  con- 
cern, "Washing  Done  Here."  "Post-cards 
and  Souvenirs"  is  a  common  legend,  and  on 
the  fronts  of  old  wine-shops  a  still  commoner 
one  is  "Ale  and  Stout."  Rows  of  beer  bottles 
stand  upon  the  window  ledges,  with  platters  of 
buns  and  sandwiches  flanking  them.  A  "Wet 
and  Dry  Canteen"  flies  a  diminutive  British 
flag  from  its  peaky  roof. 

Evidences  of  British  military  activity  multi- 
ply and  re-multiply  themselves.  Long  trains 
of  motor-trucks  lumber    by    like   great,    grey 

[  348  ] 


PARADOXES    BEHIND    THE    LINES 

elephants  each  with  a  dusty  Tommy  for  its 
mahout.  A  convoy  of  small,  new  tanks  go 
wallowing  and  bumping  along  bound  front- 
ward, and  they  suggest  a  herd  of  behemoths 
on  the  move.  Their  drivers  as  likely  as  not 
are  Chinamen  who  presently  will  turn  their 
unwieldy  charges  over  to  soldier-crews.  Officers 
clatter  past  on  horse-back  looking,  all  of  them, 
as  though  they  had  just  escaped  from  the 
military  outfitters;  staff-cars  whiz  through  the 
slower  traffic;  troops  bound  for  the  baths  or 
for  the  trenches  or  for  rest  billets  march  stolidly 
up  the  road  or  down  it  as  the  case  may  be. 
Omnibuses  from  Londontown,  now  converted 
to  military  usage,  are  thick  in  the  press. 
Military  policemen  are  more  numerous  and 
more  set  upon  scrutinising  your  pass  than  they 
were  a  few  miles  back.  And  civilians  are 
fewer. 

Alongside  the  highway,  settlements  of  wooden 
or  iron  huts  increase  in  number  and  in  propor- 
tions. Hospitals,  headquarters  of  various  units, 
bath-houses,  punishment  compounds,  motor 
stations,  supply  depots,  airdromes,  ordnance 
repair  plants,  munition  warehouses,  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
huts,  gas  test  stations,  rest  barracks,  gasoline 
depots  and  all  the  rest  of  it  show  themselves 
for  what  they  are  both  by  their  shapes  and 
by  the  notice  boards  which  mark  them.  Here 
is  cluttered  ail  the  infinitely  complicated 
machinery  of  the  war-making  industry,  with 
its  accessories  and  its  adjuncts,  its  essentials 

[349] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

and  its  incidentals,  but  so  far  there  is  no 
actual  evidence  that  the  rude  and  disturbing 
hand  of  war  has  actually  been  laid  upon  the 
land.  Rather  is  it  a  spectacle  to  make  you 
think  of  a  thousand  circus  days  rolled  into  one, 
and  mixed  in  with  all  this,  travelling  caravans, 
gypsy  encampments,  Wild  West  shows,  horse- 
fairs,  street  carnivals  and  what  not. 

Of  a  sudden  the  picture  changes.  There  are 
no  civilians  visible  now,  no  prisoners  and  no 
labour-battalions  but  only  soldiers  and  not  so 
many  soldiers  either  as  you  encountered  just 
behind  you  in  the  intermediate  zone  because  as  a 
general  thing,  the  nearer  you  come  to  the  actual 
theatre  of  hostilities,  the  fewer  soldiers  in  mass 
are  you  apt  to  see.  The  soldiers  may  be  near  by 
but  they  are  not  to  be  found  until  you  search 
for  them.  They  have  taken  cover  in  dug-outs 
and  in  trenches  and  in  remote  billets  hidden 
in  handy,  sheltered  spots  in  the  conformation 
of  the  rolling  landscape. 

Now  the  vista  stretching  before  you  wears  a 
bleak  and  untenanted  look.  You  notice  that 
the  shade  trees  have  disappeared.  Instead  of 
living  trees  there  are  only  jagged  stumps  of 
trees  or  bare,  shattered  trunks  from  which  the 
limbs  have  been  sheared  away  by  shell-fire, 
and  to  which  the  bark  clings  in  scrofulous 
patches.  Across  the  fields  go  winding,  brown 
bramble-patches  of  rusted  barbed  wire.  The 
earth  is  depressed  into  hollows  and  craters,  or 
up  thrown  into  ugly  mounds  and  hillocks.     In 

[  350  ] 


PARADOXES    BEHIND    THE    LINES 


the  wasted  and  disfigured  meadows  rank  weeds 
sprout  upon  the  edges  of  the  ragged  shellholes. 
The  very  earth  seems  to  give  off  a  sour  and 
rancid  stink.  There  is  a  village  ahead  of  you, 
but  it  is  a  village  without  roofs  to  its  houses,  or 
dwellers  within  its  breached  and  tottering 
walls.  It  is  a  jumbled  nightmare  of  a  ruin. 
It  is  as  though  a  tornado  had  blown  a  cluster 
of  brick-kilns  flat,  and  then  an  earthquake  had 
come  along  and  jumbled  the  fragments  into 
still  greater  and  more  utter  confusion. 

Protruding  from  the  flattened  rubble  about  it, 
there  uprears  a  crooked,  spindle-like  pinnacle 
of  tottering  masonry.  It  may  have  been  a 
corner  of  the  church  wall  or  the  town  hall. 
Now  it  is  like  a  beckoning  finger  calling  to 
heaven  for  vengeance.  Upon  it  is  set  a  notice- 
board  to  advise  you  that  you  are  now  in  the 
"Alert  Zone,"  which  means  your  gas-respirator 
must  be  snuggled  up  under  your  chin  ready  for 
use  and  that  your  steel  helmet  must  be  worn 
upon  your  head  and  that  you  must  take  such 
other  precautions  as  may  be  required. 

You  ride  on  then  at  reduced  speed  along  a 
camouflaged  byway  for  perhaps  fifteen  minutes. 
You  come  to  where  once  upon  a  time,  before 
the  jack-booted,  spike-headed  apostles  of  Kul- 
tur  descended  upon  this  country,  was  another 
village  standing.  This  village  has  been  more 
completely  obliterated  out  of  its  former  image — 
if  such  a  thing  is  possible — than  its  neighbour. 
It  is  little  else  than  a  red  smear  in  the  greyish 

[351] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

yellow  desolation,  where  constant  bombard- 
ment has  reduced  the  bricks  of  its  houses  to  a 
powder  and  then  has  churned  and  pestled  the 
powder  into  the  harried  earth.  There  remains 
for  proof  of  one-time  occupancy  only  the 
jagged  lines  of  certain  foundations  and  ugly 
mounds  of  mingled  soil  and  debris.  Up  from 
beneath  one  of  these  mess-heaps,  emerging 
like  a  troglodyte,  from  a  hole  which  burrows 
downward  to  a  hidden  cellar,  there  crawls 
forth  a  grimed  soldier  who  warns  you  that 
neither  you  nor  your  car  may  progress  farther 
except  at  your  dire  risk,  since  this  is  an  outpost 
position  and  once  you  pass  from  your  present 
dubious  shelter  you  will  be  in  full  view  and 
easy  target  range  of  Brother  Boche.  You 
have  advanced  to  the  very  forward  verge  of  the 
battle-line  and  you  didn't  know  it. 

One  rather  dark  night,  travelling  in  an  un- 
lighted  car,  three  of  us  were  trying  to  reach  an 
American  brigade  headquarters  where  we  ex- 
pected to  sleep.  Our  particular  destination 
was  a  hamlet  in  a  forest  just  behind  and 
slightly  east  of  the  main  defences  of  Verdun. 

We  must  have  taken  the  wrong  turn  at  a 
crossroads,  for  after  going  some  distance  along 
a  rutted  cart  track  through  the  woods  we  came 
to  where  a  deep  ditch — at  least  it  seemed  to  be 
a  deep  ditch — had  been  dug  right  across  the 
trail  from  side  to  side.  By  throwing  on  the 
brakes  the  chauffeur  succeeded  in  halting  the 
car  before  its  front  wheels  went  over  and  into 

[352] 


PARADOXES    BEHIND    THE    LINES 

the  cut.  We  climbed  out  to  investigate,  and 
then  we  became  aware  of  an  American  sentry 
standing  twenty  feet  beyond  us  in  the  aforesaid 
ditch. 

"We  are  correspondents,"  said  a  spokesman 
among  us,  "and  we  are  trying  to  get  to  General 
So-and-So's  headquarters.  Can't  we  go  any 
farther  along  this  road.^^" 

Being  an  American  this  soldier  had  a  sense  of 
humour. 

"Not  unless  you  speak  German,  you  can't," 
he  drawled.  "The  Heinies  are  dead  ahead  of 
you,  not  two  hundred  yards  from  this  here 
trench. " 

Without  once  suspecting  it  we  had  ridden 
clear  through  a  sector  held  by  us  to  the  front- 
line defences  alongside  the  beleaguered  city  of 
Verdun. 

It's  just  one  paradox  after  another,  is  the 
thing  we  call  war. 


t  B55  J 


CHAPTER  XXII 
THE  TAIL  OF  THE  SNAKE 


THE  deadlier  end  of  a  snake  is  the  head 
end,  where  the  snake  carries  its  stingers. 
Since  something  happened  in  the  Gar- 
den of  Eden  this  fact  has  been  a  matter 
of  common  knowledge,  giving  to  all  mankind 
for  all  time  respect  for  the  snake  and  fear  of 
him.  But  what  not  everybody  knows  is  that 
before  a  constrictor  can  exert  his  squeezing 
powers  to  the  uttermost  degree  he  must  have 
a  dependable  grip  for  his  tail,  else  those  mighty 
muscles  of  his  are  impotent;  because  a  snake, 
being  a  physical  thing,  is  subject  to  the  immut- 
able laws  of  physics.  There  must  be  a  ful- 
crum for  the  lever,  always;  the  coiled  spring 
that  is  loose  at  both  ends  becomes  merely  a 
piece  of  twisted  metal;  and  a  constrictor  in 
action  is  part  a  living  lever  and  part  a  living 
spring.  And  another  thing  that  not  every- 
body knows  is  that  before  a  snake  with  fangs 
can  fling  itself  forward  and  bite  it  must  have 
a  purchase  for  the  greater  part  of  its  length 
against  some  reasonably  solid  object,  such  as 
the  earth  or  a  slab  of  rock. 

[354] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 

Now  an  army  might  very  well  be  likened  to 
a  snake,  which  sometimes  squeezes  its  enemy  by 
an  enveloping  movement  but  more  often  strikes 
at  him  with  sudden  blows.  In  the  case  of  our 
own  Army  I  particularly  like  the  simile  of  a 
great  snake — a  rattlesnake,  by  preference,  since 
in  the  first  place  the  rattlesnake  is  essentially 
an  American  institution,  and  since  once  before 
our  ancestors  fought  for  their  own  freedom, 
much  as  we  now^  are  fighting  for  the  freedom  of 
the  world,  under  a  banner  that  carried  the 
device  of  a  rattler  coiled.  Moreover,  the 
rattlesnake,  which  craves  only  to  be  let  alone 
and  which  does  not  attack  save  on  intrusion  or 
provocation,  never  quits  fighting,  once  it  has 
started,  until  it  is  absolutely  no  more.  You 
may  scotch  it  and  you  may  bruise  and  crush  and 
break  it,  but  until  you  have  killed  it  exceedingly 
dead  and  cut  it  to  bits  and  buried  the  bits 
you  can  never  be  sure  that  the  job  from  your 
standpoint  is  finished.  So  for  the  purpose  of 
introducing  the  subject  in  hand  a  rattlesnake 
it  is  and  a  rattlesnake  it  shall  be  to  the  end  of 
the  narrative,  the  reader  kindly  consenting — 
a  rattlesnake  whose  bite  is  very,  very  fatal 
and  whose  vibrating  tail  bears  a  rattle  for  every 
star  in  the  flag. 

For  some  months  past  it  has  been  my  very 
good  fortune  to  watch  the  rattler's  head, 
snouting  its  nose  forth  into  the  barbed  wires 
and  licking  out  with  the  fiery  tongue  of  its 
artillery  across  the  intervening  shell  holes  at 

[355] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

Heinle  the  Hun.  Now  I  have  just  finished  a 
trip  along  the  body  of  the  snake,  stretching 
and  winding  through  and  across  France  for  300 
miles,  more  or  less,  to  where  its  tail  is  wetted  by 
salt  water  at  the  coast  ports  in  the  south  and 
the  east  and  the  southeast.  This  is  giving  no 
information  to  the  enemy,  since  he  knows 
already  that  the  snake  which  is  the  army  must 
have  a  head  at  the  battleground  and  a  neck  in 
the  trenches,  and  behind  the  head  and  the  neck 
a  body  and  a  tail,  the  body  being  the  lines  of 
communication  and  the  tail  the  primary  supply 
bases. 

His  own  army  is  in  the  likeness  of  a  somewhat 
similar  snake;  otherwise  it  could  not  function. 
Moreover,  things  are  happening  to  him,  even 
as  these  lines  are  written,  that  must  impress 
upon  his  Teutonic  consciousness  that  our  snake 
is  functioning  from  tip  to  tip.  Unless  he  is 
blind  as  well  as  mad  he  must  realise  that  he 
made  a  serious  mistake  when  he  disregarded  the 
injunction  of  the  old  Colonials:  "Don't  Tread 
On  Me. " 

In  common  with  nearly  every  other  man  to 
whom  has  been  given  similar  opportunity  I  have 
seen  hundreds  of  splendid  things  at  the  Front 
where  our  people  hold  for  defence  or  move  for 
attack — ^heroism,  devotion,  sacrifice,  an  un- 
quenchable cheerfulness,  and  a  universal  deter- 
mination that  permeates  through  the  ranks 
from  the  highest  general  to  the  greenest  private 
to  put  through  the  job  that  destiny  has  com- 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


mitted  into  our  keeping,  after  the  only  fashion 
in  which  this  job  properly  may  be  put  through. 

In  the  trenches  and  immediately  behind  them 
I  thought  I  had  exhausted  the  average  human 
capacity  for  thrills  of  pride,  but  it  has  turned 
out  that  I  hadn't.  For  back  of  the  Front, 
back  of  the  line  troops  and  the  reserves,  back 
all  the  way  to  the  tail  of  the  snake,  there  are 
things  to  be  seen  that  in  a  less  spectacular 
aspect — though  some  of  them  are  spectacular 
enough,  at  that — are  as  finely  typical  of  Ameri- 
can resource  and  American  courage  and  Ameri- 
can capability  as  any  of  the  sights  that  daily 
and  hourly  duplicate  themselves  among  the  guns. 

I  am  sure  there  still  must  be  quite  a  number 
of  persons  at  home  who  somehow  think  that 
once  a  soldier  is  armed  and  trained  and  set 
afoot  on  fighting  ground  he  thereafter  becomes 
a  self-sustaining  and  self -maintaining  organism; 
that  either  he  is  providentially  provisioned,  as 
the  ravens  of  old  fed  the  prophet,  or  that  he 
forages  for  himself,  living  on  the  spoils  of  the 
country  as  the  train  bands  and  hired  mercen- 
aries used  to  live  by  loot  in  the  same  lands 
where  our  troops  are  now  engaged.  Or  pos- 
sibly they  hazily  conceive  that  the  provender 
and  the  rest  of  it,  being  provided,  manage  to 
transport  themselves  forward  to  their  user.  If 
already  we  had  not  had  too  many  unnecessary 
delegates  loose-footing  it  over  France  this  year 
I  could  wish  that  I  might  have  had  along  with 
me  on  this  recent  trip  a  delegation  of  these 

[357] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

unreflecting  folk,  for  they  would  have  beheld,  as 
I  did,  a  greater  miracle  than  the  one  vouchsafed 
Elijah,  yet  a  miracle  of  man's  encompassment, 
and  in  some  measure  would  have  come  to 
understand  how  a  vast  American  army,  three 
thousand  miles  from  home  on  foreign  shores, 
is  fed  and  furnished  and  furbished  and  refur- 
bished, not  at  the  expense  of  the  dwellers  of 
the  soil  but  to  their  abundant  personal  benefit. 
Finally  they  would  see  in  its  operation  the 
vastest  composite  job  of  creation,  organisation 
and  construction  that  has  ever  been  put 
through,  in  the  space  of  one  year  and  three 
months  about,  by  any  men  that  ever  toiled 
anywhere  on  this  footstool  of  Jehovah. 

To  me  statistics  are  odious  things,  and  when- 
ever possible  I  avoid  them.  Besides,  some  of 
the  figures  I  have  accumulated  in  this  journey 
are  so  incredibly  stupendous  that  knowing  them 
to  be  true  figures  I  nevertheless  hesitate  to  set 
them  down.  By  my  thinking  way  adjectives 
are  needed  and  not  numerals  to  set  forth  in  any 
small  measure  a  conception  of  the  undertaking 
that  has  been  accomplished  overseas  by  our 
people  and  is  still  being  accomplished  with 
every  hour  that  passes. 

Before  this  war  came  along  Europeans  were 
given  to  saying  that  we  Americans  rarely 
bragged  of  producing  a  beautiful  thing  or  an 
artistic  thing  or  a  thing  painstakingly  done,  but 
rather  were  given  to  advertising  that  here  we 
had  erected  the  longest  bridge  and  there  the 

[  358  ] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


tallest  building  and  over  yonder  the  largest  rail- 
way terminal  and  down  this  way  the  most 
expensive  mansion — that  ever  was.  Perhaps 
the  criticism  was  justified  in  peacetimes.  To- 
day in  the  light  of  what  we  have  done  in  France 
these  past  few  months  back  of  the  lines  it  not 
only  is  justified  but  it  is  multiplied,  magnified 
and  glorified.  It  no  longer  is  a  criticism;  it  is 
a  tribute.  When  you  think  of  the  performance 
that  stands  to  our  credit  you  must  think  of  it 
in  superlatives,  and  when  you  speak  of  it  you 
must  speak  in  superlatives  too.  The  words 
all  end  in  "est." 

On  French  soil  within  twelve  months,  and  in 
several  instances  within  six  months,  we  have 
among  other  things  constructed  and  set  going 
the  biggest  cold-storage  plant,  with  two  excep- 
tions, in  the  world;  the  biggest  automobile 
storage  depot,  excluding  one  privately  owned 
American  concern,  in  the  world;  the  biggest 
system  of  military-equipment  warehouses  in  the 
world;  probably  the  biggest  field  bakery  in  the 
world;  the  biggest  strictly  military  seaport 
base  in  the  world;  what  will  shortly  be  the 
biggest  military  base  hospital  in  the  world;  the 
biggest  single  warehouse  for  stock  provender  in 
the  world;  the  biggest  junkshop  in  the  world; 
the  biggest  staff  training  school  in  the  world — 
three  months  ago  it  had  more  scholars  than 
any  university  in  America  ever  has  had;  the 
biggest  locomotive  roundhouse  under  one  roof; 
the  biggest  gasoline-storage  plant;  the  next  to 

[359] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

the  biggest  training  camp  for  aviators,  the  same 
being  a  sort  of  finishing  school  for  men  who 
have  already  had  a  degree  of  instruction  else- 
where; the  biggest  acetylene-gas  plant;  and  half 
a  dozen  other  biggest  things  in  the  world — 
and  we're  not  good  and  started  yet! 

Every  week  sees  the  plants  we  have  already 
constructed  being  enlarged  and  amplified;  every 
week  sees  some  new  contract  getting  under  way. 
Every  month's  end  sees  any  similar  period  in 
the  building  of  the  Panama  Canal  made  to 
seem  almost  a  puny  and  inconsequential 
achievement  by  contrast  and  by  comparison 
with  what  superbly  and  triumphantly  has  gone 
forward  during  that  month.  In  military  par- 
lance it  is  called  the  Service  of  Supplies.  It 
should  be  called  the  Service  of  the  Supremely 
Impossible  Supremely  Accomplished.  When 
this  war  is  ended  and  tourists  are  permitted  to 
visit  foreign  parts  Americans  coming  abroad 
and  seeing  what  has  here  been  done  will  be 
prouder  of  their  country  and  their  fellow 
countrymen  than  ever  they  have  been. 

The  Service  of  Supplies,  broadly  speaking  and 
in  its  bearing  on  operations  upon  the  Conti- 
nent, begins  at  tide  mark  and  ends  in  the 
front-line  trenches,  with  ramifications  and  side 
issues  and  annexes  past  counting,  but  all  of 
them  more  or  less  interrelated  with  the  main 
issues.  For  example  the  staff  school  can 
hardly  be  called  a  part  of  it,  though  lying,  so 
to  speak,  in  a  whorl  of  the  snake.     It  is  divided 

[360] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


into  a  Base  Section,  which  is  that  part  situate 
nearest  to  the  coasts;  an  Intermediate  Section, 
which  is  what  its  name  impKes ;  and  an  Advance 
Section,  which  extends  as  close  up  to  the  zone 
of  hostihties  as  is  consistent  with  reasonable 
safety,  the  term  "reasonable  safety"  being  a 
relative  term  in  these  days  of  hostile  raiding 
planes.  The  Base  Section  is  subdivided  again 
into  several  lesser  segments,  each  centring 
about  a  main  port. 

Broadly  described  it  might  be  said  that  any 
military  equipment  in  its  natural  course  is  first 
unloaded  and  stored  temporarily  at  the  bases. 
Then  it  is  moved  into  the  Intermediate  Sec- 
tion, where  it  is  housed  and  kept  until  called 
for.  Thereupon  it  goes  on  a  third  rail  journey 
to  the  Advance  Section,  out  of  the  depots  of 
which  it  is  requisitioned  and  sent  ahead  again 
by  trucks  or  wagons,  or  more  commonly  by 
rail,  to  meet  the  day-to-day  and  the  week-to- 
week  requirements  of  the  units  in  the  field. 

While  this  is  going  on  all  the  sundry  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  men  engaged  on  duty  along  the 
Service  of  Supplies  must  be  cared  for  without 
impairment  to  the  principal  underlying  purpose 
— that  of  provisioning  and  arming  the  fighting 
man,  and  providing  supplies  and  equipment  for 
the  hospitals  and  the  depots  and  all  the  rest  of 
it,  world  without  end.  When  you  sit  down 
to  figure  how  many  times  the  average  consign- 
ment, of  whatsoever  nature,  is  loaded  and 
unloaded  and  reloaded  again  even  after  it  has 

[361] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

been  brought  overseas,  and  how  many  times  it 
is  handled  and  rehandled,  checked  in  and 
checked  out,  accounted  for  and  entered  up, 
and  eventually  fed  out  in  dribs  as  fodder  for 
the  huge  coiling  serpent  we  call  an  army — 
you  begin  to  understand  why  it  is  that  for 
every  100  men  brought  across  the  ocean  up- 
ward of  30  must  be  assigned  to  work  in  some 
capacity  or  another  along  the  communication 
ways. 

For  the  reader  to  visit  the  various  depart- 
ments and  sub-departments  and  subber  sub- 
departments  that  properly  fall  within  the  scope 
of  the  Service  of  Supplies  would  take  of  his  time 
at  least  two  weeks.  It  took  that  much  of  my 
time  and  I  had  a  fast  touring  car  at  my  disposal 
and  between  stops  moved  at  a  cup-racing  clip. 
For  the  WTiter  to  attempt  to  set  down  in  any 
comprehensive  form  the  extent  of  the  thing 
would  fill  a  fat  book  of  many  pages.  By 
reason  of  the  limitations  of  space  this  article 
can  touch  only  briefly  on  the  general  scheme  and 
only  sketchily  upon  those  details  that  seemed  to 
the  present  observer  most  interesting. 

For  example  at  one  port — and  this  not  yet 
the  busiest  one  of  the  ports  turned  over  to  us 
by  our  allies — we  are  operating  an  extensive 
system  of  French  docks  that  already  were  there 
and  with  them  an  even  larger  system  of  docks 
constructed  by  our  Army  and  now  practically 
completed.  Likewise  we  have  here  a  great 
camp,  as  big  a  camp  as  many  a  community  at 

[362] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


home  that  calls  itself  a  city,  where  negro 
labour  battalions  are  living;  two  extensive  rest 
camps  for  troops  newly  debarked  from  the 
transports;  enormous  freight  yards  and  storage 
warehouses  with  still  another  camp  handily 
near  by  for  the  accommodation  of  the  yard 
gangs  and  the  warehouse  gangs;  a  base  hospital 
that  when  completed  will  be  the  largest  military 
base  hospital  on  earth;  a  sizable  artillery  camp 
where  gun  crews  and  ordnance  officers  take 
what  might  be  called  a  post-graduate  course  to 
supplement  the  training  they  had  in  the  States; 
a  remount  station;  an  ordnance  and  aviation- 
storage  warehouse;  and  a  motor  reception  park. 

This,  remember,  is  but  one  of  several  ports 
that  we  practically  have  taken  over  for  the 
period  of  the  war.  On  the  land  side  of  a  second 
port  are  grouped  a  rest  camp,  a  motor-assem- 
bling park,  a  system  of  docks  inside  a  basin  that 
is  provided  with  locks,  a  locomotive-assembling 
plant,  freight  yards,  warehouses  without  end, 
and  two  base  hospitals. 

Taking  either  of  these  ports  for  a  starting 
point  and  moving  inland  one  would  probably 
visit  first  the  headquarters  of  the  Service  of 
Supplies,  where  also  is  to  be  found  our  main 
salvage  depot  for  reclaiming  all  sorts  of  equip- 
ment except  motor  and  air  equipment — these 
go  to  salvage  stations  specially  provided  else- 
where— and  not  far  away  an  aviation  training 
centre.  A  little  farther  along  as  one  travelled 
up-country  he  would  come  to  an  artillery  in- 

[363] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

struction  centre  located  in  a  famous  French 
military  school;  to  our  engineer  training  centre 
and  our  engineer  replacement  depots;  and 
thence  onward  to  our  air-service  production 
centre  with  its  mammoth  plant  for  assembling, 
repairing  and  testing  planes  and  with  its  camp 
for  its  personnel.  This  would  bring  one  well 
into  the  Intermediate  Section  with  its  depots, 
freight  yards  and  warehouses,  and  with  its 
refrigerating  plant,  which  is  the  third  largest 
in  existence  and  which  shortly  will  have  a  twin 
sister  a  few  miles  away.  There  would  be  side 
excursions  to  the  motor  supply  and  spare 
parts  depot,  to  the  main  motor  repair  station, 
to  the  locomotive  repair  shops,  to  the  car 
shops,  to  the  principal  one  of  our  aviation 
training  centres,  to  the  main  field  bakery,  to 
the  gasoline  depots,  the  camouflaging  plant 
and  to  various  lesser  activities. 

Finally  one  would  land  at  the  Advance  Sec- 
tion depots  with  their  complex  regulating  sta- 
tions for  the  proper  distribution  of  the  material 
that  has  advanced  hither  by  broken  stages. 
And  yet  when  one  had  journeyed  thus  far 
one  would  merely  be  at  the  point  of  the  begin- 
ning of  the  real  work  of  getting  the  stuff  through 
to  the  forces  without  congestion,  without 
unnecessary  w^astage,  without  sending  up  too 
much  or  too  little  but  just  exactly  the  proper 
amounts  as  needed. 

Now  then,  on  top  of  this  please  remember  that 
each  important  camp,  each  station,  each  centre 

[364.] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


has  its  own  water  system,  its  own  electric  light 
system,  its  own  police  force,  its  own  fire  depart- 
ment, its  own  sanitary  squad,  its  own  sewers, 
its  own  walks  and  drives  and  flower  beds,  its 
own  emergency  hospitals  and  dispensaries  and 
surgeries,  its  own  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  its  own  Red 
Cross  unit,  generally  its  own  K.  of  C.  workers 
and  its  own  Salvation  Army  squad;  as  likely  as 
not  its  own  newspaper  and  its  own  theatre. 
Always  it  has  its  own  separate  communal  life. 

Figure  that  in  a  score  of  places  veritable  cities 
have  sprung  up  where  last  January  the  wind 
whistled  over  stubbled  fields  and  snow-laden 
pine  thickets.  Figure  that  altogether  40,- 
000,000  square  feet  of  covered  housing  space 
are  required  and  that  more  will  be  required 
as  our  expeditionary  force  continues  to  expand. 
Figure  that  in  and  out  and  through  all  these 
ramified  activities  our  locomotives  draw  our 
cars  over  several  hundred  miles  of  sidings  and 
yard  trackage,  which  Uncle  Sam  has  put  down 
by  the  sweat  of  the  brow  of  his  excellent  sons, 
supplemented  by  a  copious  amount  of  sweat 
wrung  from  the  brows  of  thousands  of  German 
prisoners  and  thousands  more  of  Indo-Chinese 
labourers  imported  b}^  the  French  and  loaned 
to  us,  and  yet  thousands  more  of  native  French 
labourers  past  or  under  the  military  age. 

Figure  that  while  the  work  of  construction 
has  been  going  on  upon  a  scope  unprecedented 
in  the  scheme  of  human  endeavour  the  men 
charged  with  the  responsibility  for  it  have  had 

[365] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

to  divide  their  energies  and  their  man  power 
to  the  end  that  the  growing  Army  should  not 
suffer  for  any  lack  of  essential  sustenance  while 
the  other  jobs  went  forward  toward  comple- 
tion. Figure  at  the  beginning  of  last  winter, 
nine  months  ago,  scarcely  a  spadeful  of  earth 
had  been  turned  for  the  foundations  anywhere. 
Figure  in  with  all  of  this  mental  pictures  of  the 
Children  of  Israel  building  the  pyramids  for 
old  Mister  Pharaoh,  of  Goethals  at  the  Isthmus, 
of  Caesar's  legions  networking  Europe  with  those 
justly  celebrated  Romanesque  roads  of  his,  of 
the  coral  insects  making  an  archipelago  in  nine 
months  instead  of  stretching  the  proceeding 
through  millions  of  years,  as  is  the  habit  of 
these  friendly  little  insects;  figure  in  all  these 
things — and  if  your  headache  isn't  by  this 
time  too  acute  for  additional  effort  without 
poignant  throbbings  at  the  temples  you  may 
begin  to  have  a  shadowy  conception  of  what 
has  happened  along  our  Service  of  Supplies 
over  here  in  France  since  we  really  got  busy. 

So  much  for  the  glittering  generalities — and 
Lawsie,  how  they  do  glitter  with  the  crusted 
diamond  dust  of  endeavour  and  stupendous 
accomplishment!  Now  for  a  few  particularly 
brilliant  outcroppings :  There  is  a  certain  port 
at  present  in  our  hands.  For  our  purposes  it 
is  a  most  important  port — one  of  the  most 
important  of  all  the  ports  that  the  French 
turned  over  to  us.  When  our  engineers  set  up 
shop  there  the  port  facilities  were  very  much 

[  366  ] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


as  they  had  been  when  the  Phoenicians  first  laid 
them  out,  barring  some  comparatively  modern 
improvements  subsequently  tacked  on  by  the 
Roman  Emperors  and  still  later  by  that  famous 
but  somewhat  disagreeable  old  lady,  Anne  of 
Brittany.  There  were  no  steam  cranes  or 
electric  hoists  on  the  docks,  and  if  there  had 
been  they  would  have  been  of  little  value 
except  for  ornamental  purposes,  seeing  that  by 
reason  of  harbourwise  limitations  ships  of  draft 
or  of  size  could  not  range  alongside  but  must 
be  lightered  of  their  cargoes  at  their  mooring 
chains  out  in  midchannel  anywhere  from  half 
a  mile  to  a  mile  and  a  half  off  shore.  More- 
over, there  was  but  one  railroad  track  running 
down  to  the  water's  edge.  Even  yet  there  are 
no  steam  cranes  in  operation;  both  freight  and 
men  must  be  brought  to  land  in  lighters.  But 
mark  you  what  man  power  plus  brains  plus 
necessity  has  accomplished  in  the  face  of  those 
structural  obstacles  and  those  mechanical  draw- 
backs. 

At  the  outset  it  was  estimated  by  experts 
among  our  allies  that  possibly  we  could  land 
20,000  troops  and  6,000  tons  of  freight  a 
month  at  this  port — if  we  kept  nonunion  hours 
and  hustled.  In  one  day  in  the  early  part  of 
the  present  summer  42,000  American  soldiers 
were  debarked  and  ferried  ashore  with  their 
portable  equipment,  and  on  another  day  of 
the  same  week  through  one  of  the  original 
French-built  docks — not  through  the  whole  row 

[367] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

of  them,  but  through  one  of  the  row — our 
stevedores  cleared  5,000  tons  of  freight.  Five 
thousand  tons  in  one  day,  when  those  Conti- 
nental wiseacres  had  calculated  that  by  strain- 
ing ourselves  and  by  employing  to  their  utmost 
all  the  facilities  provided  by  all  the  docks  in 
sight  we  might  move  6,000  tons  in  a  month! 
For  this  performance  and  for  so  frequent 
duplication  of  it  that  now  it  has  become  com- 
monplace and  matter-of-fact  and  quite  in 
accordance  with  expectations,  a  great  share  of 
the  credit  is  due  to  thousands  of  brawny  black 
American  stevedores  drawn  from  the  wharves  of 
Boston,  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  Galveston, 
Savannah,  New  Orleans  and  Newport  News. 
The  victory  that  we  are  going  to  win  will  not 
be  an  all-white  victory  by  any  manner  of  means. 
Besides  the  physical  limitations  there  were 
certain  others,  seeming  at  first  well-nigh  insur- 
mountable, which  our  military  and  civilian 
executives  had  to  meet  and  contend  with  and 
overcome.  I  mean  the  Continental  fashion  of 
doing  things — a  system  ponderously  slow  and 
infinitely  cumbersome.  When  a  job  is  done 
according  to  native  requirements  over  here  it  is 
thoroughly  done,  as  you  may  be  quite  sure, 
and  it  will  last  for  an  age;  but  frequently  the 
preceding  age  is  required  to  get  it  done.  Euro- 
peans almost  without  exception  are  thrifty  and 
saving  beyond  any  conceivable  standards  of 
ours,  but  they  are  prodigals  and  they  are 
spendthrifts  when  it  comes  down  to  expending 

[368] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


what  in  America  we  regard  as  the  most  precious 
commodity  of  all,  and  that  commodity  is  time. 
Some  of  our  masters  of  frenzied  finance  could 
wreck  a  bank  in  less  time  than  it  takes  to  cash  a 
check  in  a  French  one. 

Not  even  the  exigencies  and  the  sharp  emer- 
gencies of  wartime  conditions  can  cure  a  people, 
however  adaptable  and  sprightly  they  may  be 
in  most  regards,  of  a  system  of  thought  and  a 
system  of  habit  that  go  back  as  far  as  they  them- 
selves go  as  a  civilised  race.  Here  is  a  concrete 
instance  serving  to  show  how  at  this  same  port 
that  I  have  been  talking  about  the  Continental 
system  came  into  abrupt  collision  with  the 
American  system  and  how  the  American  system 
won  out: 

The  admiral  in  command  of  the  American 
naval  forces  centring  at  this  place  received 
word  that  on  a  given  day — to  wit:  three  days 
from  the  time  the  news  was  wirelessed  to  him — 
a  convoy  would  bring  to  harbour  transports 
bearing  about  50,000  Yank  troopers.  It  would 
be  the  admiral's  task  to  see  that  the  ships 
promptly  were  emptied  of  their  passengers  and 
that  the  passengers  were  expeditiously  and 
safely  put  upon  solid  land.  After  this  had 
been  done  it  devolved  upon  the  brigadier  in 
command  of  the  land  forces  to  quarter  them  in 
a  rest  camp  until  such  time  as  they  would  be 
dispatched  up  the  line  toward  the  Front. 

The  great  movement  of  our  soldiers  over- 
seas, which  started  in  April  and  which  proceeds 

[369] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

without  noticeable  abatement  as  I  write  this, 
was  then  in  midswing;  and  the  rest  camps  in 
the  neighbourhood  were  already  crowded  to 
their  most  stretchable  limits.  Nevertheless  the 
general  must  provide  livable  accommodations 
for  approximately  50,000  men  somewhere  in 
an  already  overcrowded  area — and  he  had  less 
than  seventy-two  hours  in  which  to  do  it.  He 
got  busy;  the  members  of  his  staff  likewise  got 
busy. 

That  same  night  he  called  into  conference  a 
functionary  of  the  French  Government,  in 
liaison  service  and  detailed  to  cooperate  with 
the  Americans  or  with  the  British  in  just  such 
situations  as  the  one  that  had  nov/  risen.  The 
official  in  question  was  zealous  in  the  common 
cause — as  zealous  as  any  man  could  be — but  he 
could  not  cure  himself  of  thinking  in  the  terms 
of  the  pattern  his  nation  had  followed  in  times 
of  peace. 

"I  must  have  a  big  rest  camp  ready  by  this 
time  day  after  to-morrow,"  said,  in  effect,  the 
American.  "So  I  went  out  this  afternoon  with 
my  adjutant  and  some  of  my  other  officers  and 
I  found  it. " 

Briefly  he  described  a  suitable  tract  four  or 
five  miles  from  the  town.  Then  he  went  on: 
"How  long  do  you  think  it  would  take  for 
your  engineers  to  furnish  me  with  a  fairly 
complete  working  survey  of  that  stretch,  includ- 
ing boundaries  and  the  general  topography  with 
particular  regards  to  drainage  and  elevations?" 

[370] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


The  Frenchman  thought  a  minute,  making 
mental  calculations. 

"From  four  to  six  weeks  I  should  say,"  he 
hazarded.  "Not  sooner  than  four  weeks 
surely." 

"I  think  I  can  beat  that,"  said  the  American. 

He  turned  to  his  desk  phone  and  called  up 
another  office  in  the  same  building  in  which 
this  conference  was  taking  place — the  office  of 
his  chief  engineer  officer. 

"Blank,"  he  said  when  he  had  secured  con- 
nection, "how  long  will  it  take  you  to  give  me 
the  survey  of  that  property  we  went  over  this 
afternoon.?  You  were  to  let  me  know  by  this 
evening. " 

Back  came  the  answer: 

"By  working  all  night,  sir,  I  can  hand  it  to 
you  at  noon  to-morrow. " 

"Are  you  sure  I'll  get  it  then?" 

"Absolutely  sure,  sir." 

"Good,"  said  the  general,  and  rang  off.  He 
faced  the  Frenchman. 

"The  survey  will  be  ready  at  noon  to- 
morrow," he  said.  "Now,  then,  I  want 
arrangements  made  so  that  construction  gangs 
can  take  possession  of  that  land  in  the  morning 
early.  They've  got  a  good  many  thousand 
tents  to  set  up  and  some  temporary  shacks  to 
build,  and  I'm  going  to  sick  'em  on  the  job  at 
daylight." 

"But  what  you  ask  is  impossible,  mon 
general,''  expostulated  the  Frenchman.    "Days 

[371  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

will  be  required — perhaps  weeks.  We  must 
follow  a  regular  custom,  else  there  will  be  legal 
complications.  We  must  search  out  the  owners 
of  the  various  parcels  of  land  included  in  the 
area  and  make  separate  terms  with  each  of 
them  for  the  use  of  his  land  by  your  people. " 

"And  meanwhile  what  will  those  50,000 
soldiers  that  are  due  here  inside  of  seventy -two 
hours  be  doing  .^" 

The  Frenchman  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Very  well  then,"  said  the  American.  "Now 
here's  what  we  must  do:  I  want  you  please  to 
get  in  touch,  right  away,  with  your  Minister  of 
War  at  Paris  and  tell  him  with  my  compli- 
ments that  at  daylight  in  the  morning  I  am 
going  to  take  possession  of  that  tract,  and  I 
want  the  sanction  of  his  department  for  my 
authority  in  taking  the  step.  Afterward  we'll 
settle  with  the  owners  of  the  land  for  the 
ground  rent  and  for  the  proper  damages  and  for 
all  the  rest  of  it.  But  now — with  my  compli- 
ments— tell  the  minister  we've  got  to  have  a 
little  action. " 

"But  to  write  a  letter  and  send  it  to  Paris 
even  by  special  courier,  and  to  have  it  read  and 
to  get  a  reply  back,  would  take  three  days  at 
the  very  quickest,"  the  Frenchman  replied. 

"I'm  not  asking  you  to  write  any  letters. 
I'm  asking  you  to  call  up  the  minister  on  the 
telephone — now,  this  minute,  from  this  office^ 
and  over  this  telephone." 

"But,  my  dear  general,  it  is  not  customary  to 

[372] 


THE    TAIL    OF    THE    SNAKE 


call  a  minister  of  the  government  on  the 
telephone  to  discuss  anything.  There  is  a  proce- 
dure for  this  sort  of  thing — a  tradition,  a  prece- 
dent if  you  will. " 

"We'll  have  to  make  a  new  precedent  of  our 
own  then.  Here's  the  telephone.  Suppose 
you  get  the  minister  on  the  wire  and  leave  the 
rest  to  me.  I'll  do  the  talking  from  this  end — 
and  I'll  take  the  responsibility." 

"But — but,  general,"  faltered  the  dum- 
founded  Frenchman,  "have  you  thought  of  the 
question  of  water  supply.'^  There  are  no  run- 
ning streams  near  your  proposed  site;  there  are 
no  reservoirs.  Of  what  use  for  me  to  do  as 
you  wish  and  run  the  risk  of  annoying  our 
Minister  of  War  when  you  have  no  water  .^^ 
And  of  course  without  water  of  what  use  is 
your  camp?" 

"Don't  let  that  worry  you,"  said  the  Ameri- 
can. "The  water  supply  has  all  been  arranged 
for.  In  fact" — ^he  glanced  at  his  watch — "in 
fact  you  might  say  that  already  it  is  being 
installed. " 

"But — if  you  will  pardon  me — what  you  say 
is  impossible!" 

"Not  at  all;  it's  very  simple.  This  town  is 
full  of  vintners'  places  and  every  vintner  has — 
or  rather  he  did  have — a  lot  of  those  big  empty 
wine  casks  on  hand.  Well,  I  sent  two  of  my 
officers  out  this  afternoon  and  bought  every 
empty  wine  cask  in  this  town.  They  rounded 
up  600  of  them,  and  there'll  be  more  coming  in 

[373] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

from  the  surrounding  country  to-morrow  morn- 
ing. I  know  there  will  be,  because  I've  got  men 
out  scouting  for  them,  and  at  the  price  I'm 
willing  to  pay  I'll  have  every  spare  wine  cask 
in  this  part  of  France  delivered  here  to  me  by 
this  time  to-morrow.  But  600  was  enough  to 
start  on.  I've  had  300  of  them  set  up  at  handy 
places  over  my  camp  site — had  it  done  this 
evening — and  at  this  moment  the  other  300  are 
being  loaded  upon  army  trucks — six  casks  to  a 
truck.  To-morrow  morning  the  trucks  will 
begin  hauling  water  to  fill  the  casks  now  on  the 
ground. " 

It  was  as  he  had  said.  The  minister  was 
called  up  at  night  on  the  telephone,  and  from 
him  a  very  willing  approval  of  the  unprece- 
dented step  in  contemplation  was  secured. 
The  water  hauling  started  at  dawn,  and  so  did 
the  tent  raising  start.  The  suryey  was  de- 
livered at  noon;  half  an  hour  later  American 
labour  battalions  were  digging  ditches  for 
kitchen  drains  and  latrines,  and  in  accordance 
with  the  contour  of  the  chosen  spot  a  makeshift 
but  serviceable  sewerage  system  was  being 
installed.  When  the  troops  marched  out  to 
their  camp  in  the  late  afternoon  of  the  second 
day  following,  their  camp  was  there  waiting  for 
them  and  their  supper  was  ready. 


[S74] 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
BRICKS  WITHOUT  STRAW 

TAKE  any  separate  project  along  our  line 
of  communication.  Pick  it  out  at  ran- 
dom. It  makes  no  difference  which 
particular  spot  you  choose;  you  never- 
theless are  morally  sure  to  find  stationed  there  a 
man  or  a  group  of  men  who  have  learned  to 
laugh  at  the  problem  of  making  bricks  without 
straw.  If  put  to  it  they  could  make  monu- 
ments out  of  mud  pies.  Brought  face  to  face 
with  conditions  and  environments  that  were 
entirely  new  to  their  own  experience,  and  con- 
fronted as  they  were  at  the  outset  by  the  task 
of  providing  essentials  right  out  of  the  air — 
essentials  that  were  vitally  and  immediately 
needed  and  that  could  not  be  forthcoming  from 
the  States  for  weeks  or  even  months — an 
executive  or  an  underlying  invariably  would  find 
a  way  out  of  the  difficulty. 

There  was  pressing  need  once  for  a  receptacle 
in  which  rubber  cement  could  be  mixed  in 
small  quantities.  Neither  the  local  community 
nor    the    government    stores    yielded    such    a 

[  375  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

thing  and  there  was  no  time  to  send  clear  back 
New  York  or  Philadelphia  for  it.  The  man 
who  was  charged  with  the  responsibility  of 
getting  that  rubber  cement  mixed  went  on  a 
scouting  tour.  Somewhere  he  unearthed  prob- 
ably the  only  ice-cream  freezer  in  rural  France 
outside  of  the  immediate  vicinity  of  Paris,  and 
he  acquired  it  at  the  proprietor's  valuation 
and  loaded  it  into  his  car  and  hurried  back 
with  it  to  his  shop,  and  ten  minutes  after  he 
arrived  the  required  cement  was  being  stirred 
to  the  proper  consistency  in  the  ice-cream, 
freezer. 

At  the  main  depot  of  automobile  supplies 
they  needed,  right  away,  springs  with  which  to 
repair  broken-down  light  cars.  As  yet  an  ade- 
quate supply  of  spare  parts  had  not  been 
received  from  the  base,  nor  was  there  any 
likelihood  that  a  supply  would  be  forthcoming 
at  once.  The  colonel  in  charge  of  the  depot 
sent  men  ranging  through  the  countryside  with 
instructions  to  buy  up  stuff  that  would  make 
springs.  They  brought  him  in  tons  of  pur- 
chases, and  most  unlikely  looking  material  it 
was  too — rusted  chunks  and  strips  and  spirals 
of  metal  taken  from  the  underpinnings  of 
French  market  carts  and  agricultural  imple- 
ments; but  the  forces  in  the  machine  shops 
sailed  in  and  converted  the  lot  into  automobile 
springs  in  no  time  at  all. 

This  same  colonel  already  had  a  plant  which, 
exclusive  of  the  value  of  buildings  specially 

[376] 


BRICKS     WITHOUT    STRAW 


built,  represents  at  this  time  a  national  invest- 
ment of  $35,000,000,  and  the  outlay  was 
growing  every  hour.  He  used  to  be  the  head  of 
a  big  metal-working  establishment  at  home. 
As  a  specialist  in  his  line  he  joined  the  Army 
to  help  out.  Now  every  month  he  does  a 
volume  of  buying  that  would  have  made  his 
average  year's  turnover  in  times  of  peace  look 
trifling  in  comparison.  Just  before  he  sailed 
to  take  over  his  present  job  he  ordered 
$6,000,000  worth  of  motor  parts  at  one  fell 
swoop,  as  it  were. 

Because  of  the  rapidity  with  which  our 
forces  on  foreign  service  multiplied  them- 
selves there  was  a  rush  order  from  General 
Headquarters  for  more  buildings  and  yet  more 
buildings,  at  one  of  our  warehouse  depots,  to 
provide  for  storage  of  perishable  foodstuffs  in 
transit  from  the  rear  to  the  Front.  Between 
seven-thirty  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  five 
o'clock  in  the  evening  of  a  given  day  a  gang 
of  steel  riggers  accomplished  the  impossible  by 
rearing  and  bolting  together  the  steel  frame — 
posts,  girders,  plates,  rafters  and  crossbeams — 
for  a  building  measuring  96  feet  in  width, 
24  feet  in  height  and  230  feet  in  length,  the 
same  being  merely  one  of  the  units  of  a  struc- 
ture that  very  soon  thereafter  was  up  in  the 
air  and  that  measured  650  feet  crosswise  and 
650  feet  lengthwise,  with  railroad  tracks  stretch- 
ing alongside  and  in  between  its  various 
segments. 

[377] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

"When  we  laid  out  our  original  plans  for 
this  project  the  French  said  it  would  be  en- 
tirely too  large  for  our  uses,  no  matter  how 
big  an  army  we  brought  over,"  remarked  to 
me  a  young  ex-civilian,  now  wearing  a  captain's 
markings  on  his  flannel  shirt,  who  had  put 
through  this  undertaking.  "Our  people 
thought  differently  and  we  went  ahead,  trying 
to  figure  as  we  went  along  on  all  future  con- 
tingencies. The  result  is  that  already  we  are 
enlarging  upon  the  old  specifications  as  rapidly 
as  possible.  Even  so  the  supplies  are  piling 
up  on  us  faster  than  we  can  store  them.  Look 
yonder. " 

He  pointed  to  a  veritable  mountain  of  baled 
hay — a  regular  Himalaya  of  hay — which  covered 
a  corner  of  the  field  whereon  we  stood.  It 
towered  high  above  the  tops  of  the  trees 
behind  it;  it  stretched  clear  to  the  edge  of  the 
woodlands  beyond,  and  it  was  crowned,  as  a 
mountain  peak  should  be,  with  white;  only  in 
this  instance  the  blanket  was  of  canvas  instead 
of  snow. 

"There  are  80,000  tons  of  American  baled 
hay  in  that  pile,"  he  said,  "and  in  a  month 
from  now  if  the  present  rate  of  growth  keeps 
up  it  will  be  bigger  by  a  third  than  it  is  now. 
It's  quite  some  job — taking  care  of  this  man's 
army. " 

In  the  midriff  of  the  Intermediate  Section  is 
a  project  on  which  at  this  writing  10,000  men 
are  at  work,  and  on  an  air-service  field  adjoining 

[  378  ] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


it  3,000  more  men  are  engaged.  Exclusive  of 
material  for  local  construction  purposes  500 
carloads  of  strictly  military  supplies  arrive 
here  daily,  and  approximately  75  carloads  a 
day  move  out.  Later  the  ratio  of  outgoing 
equipment  will  increase,  but  the  incoming 
amount  is  not  liable  to  fall  off  very  much.  To 
house  the  accumulating  mass  here  and  else- 
where in  the  same  zone,  including  as  it  does 
engineers'  stores,  ordnance  stores,  fresh  meats, 
salt  meats,  medical  stores,  harness,  guns  and 
quartermasters'  stores,  there  has  been  provided 
or  will  be  provided  4,500,000  square  feet  of 
roof-covered  space  and  10,000,000  square  feet 
of  open  storage  space. 

When  I  came  that  way  the  other  day  miles  of 
the  plain  had  been  filled  pretty  thoroughly  with 
buildings  and  with  side  tracks  and  wagon 
roads;  and,  scattered  over  a  tract  measuring 
roughly  six  miles  one  way  and  four  miles  the 
other,  between  13,000  and  14,000  men  were 
engaged.  In  January  of  this  year,  when  a 
man  who  now  accompanied  me  had  visited  the 
same  spot,  he  said  there  was  one  building 
standing  on  the  area,  and  that  two  side  tracks 
were  in  use;  all  the  rest  was  a  barren  stretch  of 
snowdrifts  and  half-frozen  mud  and  desolation. 
They  were  just  beginning  then  to  dig  the  founda- 
tions of  our  main  cold-storage  plant.  It  is 
finished  and  in  operation  to-day.  Besides  being 
a  model  plant  it  is  the  third  largest  cold-storage 
plant  in  the  world,  and  yet  it  is  to  be  dis- 

[379] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

tinguished  from  the  sixty-odd  buildings  that 
surround  it  only  by  the  fact  that  it  is  taller 
and  longer  and  has  more  smokestacks  on  it 
than  any  of  the  rest. 

At  the  principal  depot  of  the  Advance  Section, 
where  the  chief  regulating  oflScer  is  stationed, 
one  of  the  biggest  jobs  is  to  sort  out  the  man 
provender  as  it  flows  in  by  rail  and  to  fill  up 
each  of  fifty  or  sixty  track-side  warehouses  with 
balanced  rations — so  much  flour,  so  much  salt 
meat,  so  much  of  salt,  sugar,  lard,  canned 
goods,  pepper,  vinegar,  pickles,  and  so  on,  to 
each  building;  or  else  to  load  a  building  with 
balanced  man  equipment — comprising  shoes, 
socks,  underwear,  shirts,  uniforms  and  the  rest 
of  it  down  to  shoe  laces  and  buttons,  the 
purpose  of  this  arrangement  being  that  when  a 
warehouse  is  emptied  the  man  who  is  in  charge, 
even  before  checking  up  on  the  loading  gangs, 
already  knows  almost  to  a  pound  or  a  stitch 
just  how  many  rations  or  how  many  articles  of 
apparel  have  gone  forward. 

In  each  warehouse  the  canned  tomatoes,  the 
vinegar  and  the  stuff  that  contains  mild  acids 
are  stored  at  the  two  ends  of  the  building  in 
crosswise  barricades  that  extend  to  the  roof. 
This  disposal  was  an  idea  of  the  officer  in  control 
of  the  arrangement.  He  explained  to  us  that 
in  case  of  fire  canned  stuff  bearing  a  heavy 
proportion  of  fluid  would  burn  more  slowly 
than  the  other  foodstuffs,  so  there  would  be  a 
better   chance   of   confining   the   blaze   to   the 

[380] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


building  in  which  it  originated  and  of  preventing 
its  spread  to  adjoining  or  adjacent  buildings, 
which  might  be  of  brick  or  concrete  or  stone 
or  sheet  metal,  but  which  are  more  apt  to  be  of 
frame. 

A  British  colonel  on  a  visit  of  inspection  to 
our  Service  of  Supplies  visited  this  project 
on  the  same  day  that  I  came.  Radiating 
admiration  and  astonishment  at  every  step  and 
at  every  stop,  he  accompanied  the  young  first 
lieutenant  who  was  in  personal  charge  of  the 
warehousing  scheme  on  a  tour  of  his  domain, 
which  covered  miles.  When  the  round  had 
been  completed  and  the  lieutenant  had  saluted 
and  taken  himself  away  the  Britisher  said  to 
the  chief  regulating  officer: 

*'I  have  never  seen  anything  so  perfectly 
devised  as  your  plan  of  operation  and  distribu- 
tion here.  I  take  it  that  the  young  man  who 
escorted  me  through  is  one  of  your  great 
American  managing  experts.  I  imagine  he 
must  have  been  borrowed  from  one  of  those 
marvellous  mail-order  houses  of  yours,  of  which 
I  have  heard  so  much.  One  thing  puzzles  me 
though — he  must  have  come  here  fresh  from 
business  pursuits,  and  yet  he  bears  himself  like 
a  trained  soldier. " 

The  chief  regulating  officer  smiled  a  little 
smile. 

"That  man,"  he  said,  "is  an  old  enlisted 
man  of  our  little  antebellum  Regular  Army. 
He  didn't  win  his  commission  until  he  came 

[381] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

over  here.  Before  that  he  was  a  noncom  on 
clerical  duty  in  the  quartermaster's  depart- 
ment, and  before  that  he  was  a  plain  private, 
and  as  far  as  I  know  he  never  worked  a  day 
for  any  concern  except  our  own  Government 
since  he  reached  the  enlisting  age." 

In  addition  to  doing  what  I  should  say  at  an 
offhand  guess  was  the  work  of  ten  reasonably 
active  men,  the  colonel  who  supervises  our 
Advance  Section  has  found  time  since  he 
took  over  his  present  employment  to  organise  a 
brass  band  and  a  glee  club  among  his  personnel, 
to  map  out  and  stage-manage  special  entertain- 
ments for  the  men,  to  entertain  visitors  who 
come  officially  and  unofficially,  to  keep  several 
thousand  individuals  busy  in  their  working 
hours  and  happy  in  their  leisure  hours,  and  at 
frequent  intervals  to  write  for  the  benefit  of 
his  command  special  bulletins  touching  on  the 
finer  sides  of  the  soldier's  duties  and  the  soldier's 
discipline.  He  gave  me  a  copy  of  one  of  his 
more  recent  pronouncements.  He  called  it  a 
memorandum;  I  called  it  a  classic.  It  ran  as 
follows : 

"1.  The  salute,  in  addition  to  being  a  soldier's 
method  of  greeting,  is  the  gauge  by  w^hich  he 
show^s  to  the  world  his  proficiency  in  the  pro- 
fession, his  morale  and  the  condition  of  his 
discipline. 

"2.  For  me  the  dial  of  a  soldier's  salute  has 
three  marks,  and  I  read  his  salute  more  accur- 
ately than  he  himself  could  tell  me. 

[  382  ] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


"3.  The  three  gradations  are: 

(a)  I  am  a  soldier;  I  know  my  trade  or  will 
know  it  very  soon,  and  I  will  be  a  success  as  a 
soldier  or  a  civilian,  wherever  I  may  be  put. 

(6)  I  do  not  know  what  I  am  and  do  not 
care,  I  only  do  what  I  am  forced  to  do,  and 
will  never  be  much  of  a  success  at  anything. 

(c)  I  am  a  failure  and  am  down  and  out, 
sick,  homesick  and  disgruntled.  I  cannot  stand 
the  gaff. 

"4.  As  Americans  try  to  conceal  your  feelings 
from  our  Allies. 

"Remember  you  are  just  as  much  fighters 
here  as  you  would  be  carrying  a  pail  of  food 
to  the  fighting  line  or  actually  firing  a  gun. 

"Everv  extra  exertion  is  an  addition  to  the 
firing  line  direct. 

"Every  bit  of  shirking  is  robbing  the  firing 
line." 

"Buck  Up!" 


For  qualities  of  human  interest  no  joints  in 
the  snake's  spine,  no  twists  in  his  manifold 
convolutions  measure  up,  I  think,  to  the 
salvage  depots.  Once  upon  a  time,  and  not  so 
very  long  ago,  an  army  in  the  field  threw  away 
what  it  did  not  use  or  what  through  breakage 
or  stress  became  unserviceable.  That  day  is 
gone.  In  this  war  the  wastage  is  practically 
negligible.  Our  people  have  learned  this  lesson 
from  the  nations  that  went  into  the  war  before 
we  entered  it,  but  in  all  modesty  I  believe,  from 

[  383  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

what  I  have  seen,  that  we  have  added  some 
first-rate  improvements  to  the  plan  in  the  few 
months  that  have  been  vouchsafed  us  for 
experiments  and  demonstrations.  Moreover,  to 
the  success  of  our  plans  in  this  regard  there 
have  been  diflSculties  that  did  not  confront  our 
Allies  to  the  same  extent.  For  instance  our 
biggest  motor-repair  depot  is  housed  in  what 
formerly  had  been  a  French  infantry  barracks — 
a  series  of  buildings  that  had  never  been 
devised  for  the  purposes  to  which  they  are 
now  put,  and  that  at  first  offered  many  serious 
problems,  mechanical  and  physical. 

In  tall  brick  buildings,  under  sheds  and  under 
tents  and  out  in  the  open  upon  the  old  parade 
ground  a  great  chain  of  machine  shops,  car- 
penter shops,  paint  shops,  upholstery  shops 
and  leather-working  shops  has  been  coordinated 
and  is  cooperating  to  attain  the  maximum  of 
possible  production  with  the  minimum  of  lost 
energy  and  lost  effort.  The  scientist  who  recon- 
structs a  prehistoric  monster  from  a  fossilised 
femur  finds  here  his  industrial  prototype  in 
the  smart  American  mechanics  who  build  up  an 
ambulance  or  a  motor  truck  from  a  fire- 
blackened,  shell-riddled  car  frame,  minus  top, 
minus  wheels,  minus  engine  parts.  What  comes 
out  of  one  total  wreck  goes  into  another  that 
is  not  quite  so  totally  so.  And  when  a  tool  is 
lacking  for  some  intricate  job  the  Yank  turns 
in  and  makes  it  himself  out  of  a  bit  of  scrap; 
and  neither  he  nor  his  fellows  think  he  has  done 

[  284  ] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


anything  wonderful  either.  It's  just  part  of 
the  day's  work. 

The  salvage  depot  for  human  equipment  and 
for  lighter  field  equipment  is  established  at  this 
writing  in  what  was,  not  so  very  long  ago,  a 
shop  where  one  of  the  French  railroad  lines 
painted  its  cars.  It  began  active  operations 
last  January  with  six  civilian  employees  under 
an  officer  who  four  weeks  before  he  landed  in 
France  was  a  business  man  in  Philadelphia. 
In  June  it  had  on  its  pay  rolls  nearly  4,000 
workers,  mainly  women  and  many  of  them 
refugees. 

When  all  the  floor  space  available — about 
200,000  square  feet  of  it — has  been  taken  over 
the  plant  will  have  a  personnel  of  about  5,000 
hands,  and  it  will  be  possible  to  do  the  reclama- 
tion work  in  clothing,  shoes,  rubber  boots  and 
slickers,  harness  and  leather,  canvas  and 
webbing,  field  ranges,  mess  equipments,  stoves, 
helmets,  trenching  tools,  side  arms,  rifle  slings, 
picks,  shovels  and  metal  gear  generally  for 
about  400,000  fighting  men,  with  an  estimated 
saving  to  Uncle  Sam — exclusive  of  the  vast 
sum  saved  in  tonnage  and  shipping  charges — 
of  about  $1,000,000  a  month. 

At  this  time  10,000  garments  and  articles 
of  personal  attire  are  passing  through  this 
plant  every  twenty-four  hours,  and  coming  out 
cleaned,  m^ended,  remade  or  converted  to  other 
purposes.  A  man  could  spend  a  week  here,  I 
feel  certain,  and  not  count  his  sight-seeing  time 

[385] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

as  wasted.  Among  the  men  workers  he  would 
find  invalided  and  crippled  soldiers  of  at  least 
six  nations — America,  Belgium,  France,  Greece, 
Serbia  and  Italy.  Among  the  women  workers, 
who  average  in  pay  seven  francs  a  day^ — big 
wages  for  rural  France — he  would  find  many 
women  of  refinement  and  education  hailing 
from  evacuated  districts  in  northern  France 
and  Belgium,  whose  faces  bespeak  the  terrors 
and  torments  through  which  they  have  passed 
in  the  attempted  implanting  of  the  seeds  of 
Kultur  upon  their  homelands.  Now  they  sit 
all  day,  driving  sewing  machines  or  managing 
knitting  looms  alongside  their  chattering,  gossip- 
ing sisters  of  the  peasant  class. 

And  every  hour  in  this  beehive  of  industry 
the  man  who  looked  close  would  come  upon 
things  eloquently  bespeaking  the  tragedy  or 
the  comedy  of  war's  flotsam  and  jetsam.  Now 
perhaps  it  would  be  a  battered  German  bugle 
picked  up  by  some  souvenir-loving  soldier,  only 
to  be  flung  into  the  camp  salvage  dump  when 
its  finder  v/earied  of  carrying  it;  and  now  it 
would  be  a  khaki  blouse  with  a  bullet  hole 
in  the  breast  of  it  and  great  brown  stains,  stiff 
and  dry,  in  its  lining.  A  talking  machine  in 
fair  order,  the  half  of  a  tombstone  and  the  full- 
dress  equipment  of  a  captain  of  Prussian 
Hussars  were  among  the  relics  that  turned  up 
at  the  salvage  depot  in  one  week. 

There  is  no  dump  heap  behind  the  con- 
verted paint  barn,  for  the  very  good  reason 

[386] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


that  practically  there  is  nothing  to  dump. 
Everything  is  saved.  The  salvaged  junk  comes 
in  by  the  carload  lot  from  the  Front — filthy, 
crumpled,  broken,  blood-crusted,  verminous, 
tattered,  smelly  and  smashed.  Sorters  seize 
upon  it  and  separate  it  and  classify  it  according 
to  kind  and  state  of  disrepair.  Men  and  women 
bear  it  in  armloads  to  sterilisers,  where  live 
steam  kills  the  lice  and  the  lice  eggs;  thence  it 
goes  to  the  cleaning  vats,  after  which  it  is  sorted 
again  and  the  real  job  of  making  something 
out  of  what  seemed  to  be  worse  than  nothing 
at  all  is  undertaken,  with  experts,  mainly 
Americans,  to  supervise  each  forward  step  in 
the  big  contract  of  renovation,  restoration  and 
utilisation. 

After  the  body  clothing  has  been  made  clean 
and  odourless  it  is  assigned  to  one  of  three  classes, 
to  wit:  (a)  Garments  needing  minor  repairs 
and  still  sightly  and  serviceable,  which  are  put 
in  perfect  order  and  reissued  to  front-line  troops; 
(6)  garments  not  so  sightly  but  still  serviceable, 
which  are  issued  to  S  O  S  workers,  including 
stevedores,  labourers,  railroad  engineers,  fire- 
men and  forestry  workers;  (c)  garments  that 
are  not  sightly  but  that  will  repay  repairing. 
These  are  dyed  green  and  given  to  German 
prisoners  of  war.  Practically  no  new  material 
is  used  for  repair.  Garments  that  are  past 
salvation  in  their  present  shape  are  cut  up  to 
furnish  patches.  Three  garments  out  of  four 
are  reclaimed  in  one  form  or  another;  the  fourth 

[387] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

one  becomes  scrap  for  patchings.  Shoes  are 
washed  in  an  acid  disinfectant  that  cleanses  the 
leather  without  injuring  its  fabric,  and  then 
they  are  dried  and  greased  before  going  in  to 
the  workers.  Shoes  that  are  worth  saving  are 
saved  to  the  last  one;  those  past  saving  are 
ripped  apart  and  the  uppers  are  cut  into  shoe 
strings,  while  the  soles  furnish  ground-up  leather 
for  compositions.  Thanks  to  processes  of  wash- 
ing, cleansing  and  repairing,  a  salvage  average  of 
approximately  ninety  per  cent,  is  attained  in 
slickers  and  rubber  boots. 

Last  spring  the  high  military  authorities 
decided  to  shorten  the  heavy  overcoats  worn 
by  our  soldiers,  so  it  befalls  that  the  lengths  of 
cloth  cut  from  the  skirts  of  the  overcoats  are 
now  being  fashioned  at  the  salvage  plants  into 
uppers  for  hospital  slippers,  while  old  campaign 
hats  furnish  the  material  for  the  soles.  The 
completed  article,  very  neat  in  appearance  and 
very  comfortable  to  wear,  is  turned  out  here  in 
great  numbers.  Old  tires  are  cooked  down  to 
furnish  new  heels  for  rubber  boots.  Old  socks 
are  unravelled  for  the  sake  of  the  wool  in  them. 
Tin  receptacles  that  have  held  gasoline  or  oil 
are  melted  apart,  and  from  their  sides  and 
tops  disks  are  fashioned  which,  being  coated 
with  aluminum,  become  markers  for  the  graves 
where  our  dead  soldier  boys  have  been  buried. 
Smaller  tins  are  smelted  down  into  lumps  and 
used  for  a  dozen  purposes.  The  solder  from 
the  cans  is  not  wasted  either.     Even  the  hob- 

[  388  ] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


nails  of  worn-down  boot  soles  are  saved  for 
future  use. 

Master  of  theatrical  trick  and  device  that 
he  is,  none  the  less  David  Belasco  could  learn 
lessons  at  our  camouflaging  plant.  He  prob- 
ably would  feel  quite  at  home  there,  too,  seeing 
that  the  place  has  a  most  distinctive  behind- 
the-scenes  atmosphere  of  its  own;  it  is  a  sort 
of  overgrown  combination  of  scenery  loft, 
property  room,  paint  shop  and  fancy-dress 
costumer's  establishment,  where  men  who  gave 
up  sizable  incomes  to  serve  their  country  in 
this  new  calling  work  long  hours  seeking  to 
improve  upon  the  artifices  already  developed — 
and  succeeding — and  to  create  brand-new  ones 
of  their  own. 

As  a  branch  of  military  modernism,  camou- 
flaging is  even  newer  than  the  trade  of  scientific 
salvaging  is  and  offers  far  larger  opportunities 
for  future  exploitation.  After  all  there  are 
just  so  many  things  and  no  more  that  may  be 
done  with  and  to  a  pair  of  worn-out  rubber 
boots,  but  in  the  other  field  the  only  limits  are 
the  limits  of  the  designer's  individual  ingenuity 
and  his  individual  skill. 

We  came,  under  guidance,  to  a  big  open- 
fronted  barracks  where  hundreds  of  French 
women  and  French  girls  made  screenage  for 
road  protection  and  gun  emplacements.  The 
materials  they  worked  with  were  simple  enough : 
rolls  of  ordinary  chicken  wire,  strips  of  burlap 
sacking    dyed    in    four    colours — bright  green, 

[  S89  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

yellowish  green,  tawny  and  brown — and  wisps 
of  raffia  with  which  to  bind  the  cloth  scraps 
into  the  meshes  of  the  wire.  For  summer  use 
the  bright  green  is  used,  for  early  spring  and 
fall  the  lighter  green  and  the  taw^ny;  and  for 
winter  the  brown  and  the  tawny  mingled. 
For,  you  see,  camouflage  has  its  seasons,  too, 
inarching  in  step  with  the  swing  of  the  year. 
Viewed  close  up  the  completed  article  looks  to 
be  exactly  what  it  is — chicken  wire  festooned 
thickly  with  gaudy  rags.  But  stretch  a  breadth 
of  it  across  a  dip  in  the  earth  and  then  fling 
against  it  a  few  boughs  cut  from  trees,  and  at  a 
distance  of  seventy -five  yards  no  man,  however 
keen-eyed,  can  say  just  where  the  authentic 
foliage  leaves  off  and  the  artificial  joins  on. 

For  roadsides  in  special  cases  there  is  still 
another  variety  of  camouflage,  done  in  zebra- 
like strips  of  light  and  dark  rags  alternating, 
and  this  stuff  being  erected  alongside  the  open 
highway  is  very  apt  indeed  to  deceive  your 
hostile  observer  into  thinking  that  what  he 
beholds  is  merely  a  play  of  sunlight  and  shade 
upon  a  sloped  flank  of  earth;  and  he  must 
venture  very  perilously  near  indeed  to  discern 
that  the  seeming  pattern  of  shadows  really 
masks  the  movements  of  troops.  This  deceit 
has  been  described  often  enough,  but  the  sheer 
art  of  it  takes  on  added  interest  when  one 
witnesses  its  processes  and  sees  how  mar- 
vellously its  effects  are  brought  about. 

In  an  open  field  used  for  experimenting  and 

[390] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


testing  was  a  dump  pile  dotted  thickly  with  all 
the  nondescript  debris  that  accumulates  upon 
the  outer  slope  of  a  dug-in  defence  where 
soldiers  have  been — loose  clods  of  earth,  bits 
of  chalky  stone,  shattered  stumps,  empty  beef 
tins,  broken  mess  gear,  discarded  boots,  smashed 
helmets,  and  such  like.  It  was  crowned  with  a 
frieze  of  stakes  projecting  above  the  top  of  the 
trench  behind  it,  and  on  its  crest  stood  one  of 
those  shattered  trees,  limbless  and  ragged, 
that  often  are  to  be  found  upon  terrains  where 
the  shelling  has  been  brisk. 

Here  for  our  benefit  a  sort  of  game  was 
staged.  First  we  stationed  ourselves  sixty  feet 
away  from  the  mouad.  Immediately  five  heads 
appeared  above  the  parapet — heads  with  shrap- 
nel helmets  upon  them,  and  beneath  the  helmet 
rims  sunburnt  faces  peering  out.  The  eyes 
looked  this  way  and  that  as  the  heads  turned 
from  side  to  side. 

"Please  watch  closely,"  said  the  camouflage 
ofl5cer  accompanying  us.  "And  as  you  watch, 
remember  this:  Two  of  those  heads  are  the 
heads  of  men.  The  three  others  are  dummies 
mounted  on  sticks  and  manipulated  from  below. 
Since  you  have  been  at  the  Front  you  know 
the  use  of  the  dummy — the  enemy  sniper 
shoots  a  hole  in  it  and  the  men  in  the  pit,  by 
tracing  the  direction  of  the  bullet  through  the 
pierced  composition,  are  able  to  locate  the  spot 
where  Mister  Sniper  is  hidden.  Now  then,  try 
to  pick  out  the  real  heads  from  the  fake  ones. " 

[391] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


There  were  three  of  us,  and  we  all  three  of  us 
tried.  No  two  agreed  in  our  jesses  and  not 
one  of  us  scored  a  perfect  record;  and  yet  we 
stood  very  much  nearer  than  any  enemy 
marksman  could  ever  hope  to  get.  The  life- 
likeness  of  the  thing  was  uncanny. 

"Next  take  in  the  general  layout  of  that 
spot, "  said  the  camouflage  expert,  with  a  wave 
of  his  hand  toward  the  dump  pile.  "Looks 
natural  and  orthodox,  doesn't  it.^  Seems  to  be 
just  the  outer  side  of  a  bit  of  trench  work, 
doesn't  it.^  Well,  it  isn't.  Two  of  those  stakes 
are  what  they  appear  to  be — ordinary  common 
stakes.  The  other  two  are  hollow  metal  tubes, 
inside  of  which  trench  periscopes  are  placed. 
And  the  tree  trunk  is  faked,  too.  It  is  all 
hollow  within — a  shell  of  light  tough  steel  with 
a  ladder  inside,  and  behind  that  twisted  crotch 
where  the  limbs  are  broken  off  the  observer 
is  stationed  at  this  moment  watching  us  through 
a  manufactured  knothole.  The  only  genuine 
thing  about  that  tree  trunk  is  the  bark  on  it — we 
stripped  that  off  of  a  beech  over  in  the  woods. 

"The  dump  heap  isn't  on  the  level  either, 
as  you  possibly  know,  since  you  may  have  seen 
such  dump  piles  concealing  the  sites  of  obser- 
vation pits  up  at  the  Front.  Inside  it  is  all 
dug  out  into  galleries  and  on  the  side  facing 
us  it  is  full  of  peepholes — seventeen  peepholes 
in  all,  I  think  there  are.  Let's  go  within  fifteen 
feet  of  it  and  see  how  many  of  them  you  can 
detect. " 

[392] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


At  a  fifteen-foot  range  it  was  hard  enough  for 
us  to  make  out  five  of  the  seventeen  peep 
places.  Yet  beforehand  we  understood  that 
each  tin  can,  each  curled-up  boot,  each  sizable 
tuft  of  withered  grass,  each  swirl  of  the  tree 
stump — masked  a  craftily  hidden  opening 
shielded  with  fine  netting,  through  which  a 
man  crouching  in  safety  beneath  the  surface 
of  the  earth  might  study  the  land  in  front  of 
him.  That  innocent-appearing,  made-to-order 
dump  pile  had  the  eyes  of  a  spider;  but  even 
so,  the  uniformed  invader  might  have  climbed 
up  and  across  it  without  once  suspecting  the 
truth. 

For  a  final  touch  the  camouflage  crew  put 
on  their  best  stunt  of  all.  Five  men  encased 
themselves  in  camouflage  suits  of  greenish- 
brown  canvas  which  covered  them  head,  feet, 
body  and  limbs,  and  which  being  decorated 
with  quantities  of  dried,  grasslike  stuff  sewed 
on  in  patches,  made  them  look  very  much  as 
Fred  Stone  used  to  look  when  he  played  the 
Scarecrow  Man  in  "The  Wizard  of  Oz"  years 
ago.  Each  man  carried  a  rifle,  likewise  camou- 
flaged. Then  we  turned  our  backs  while  they 
took  position  upon  a  half-bare,  half-greened 
hillock  less  than  a  hundred  feet  from  us. 

This  being  done  we  faced  about,  and  each 
knowing  that  five  armed  men  were  snuggled 
there  against  the  bank  tried  to  pick  them  out 
from  their  background.  It  was  hard  sledding, 
so  completely  had  the  motionless  figures  melted 

[S93] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

into  the  herbage  and  the  chalky  soil.  Finally 
we  united  in  the  opinion  that  we  had  located 
three  of  the  five.  But  we  were  wrong  again. 
We  really  had  picked  out  only  one  of  the  five. 
The  two  other  suspected  clumps  were  not  men 
but  what  they  seemed  to  be — small  protrusions 
in  the  ragged  and  irregular  turf.  Yes,  I  am 
sure  Mr.  Belasco  could  have  spent  a  fruitful 
half  hour  or  so  there  with  us. 

Thanks  to  yet  another  crafty  and  deceitful 
artifice  of  the  camouflage  outfit  it  is  possible  to 
make  the  enemy  think  he  is  being  attacked  by 
raiders  advancing  in  force  when  as  a  matter  of 
fact  what  he  beholds  approaching  him  are  not 
files  of  men  but  harmless  dummies  operated 
by  a  mechanism  that  is  as  simple  as  simplicity 
itself.  The  attack  will  come  from  elsewhere 
while  his  attention  is  focused  upon  the  make- 
believe  feint,  but  just  at  present  there  are 
military  reasons  why  he  should  not  know  any 
of  the  particulars.  It  would  take  the  edge  of 
his  surprise,  even  though  he  is  not  likely  to  live 
to  appreciate  the  surprise  once  the  trick  has 
been  pulled. 

These  details  of  the  whole  vast  undertaking 
that  I  have  touched  upon  here  are  merely  bits 
that  stand  out  with  especial  vividness  from  the 
recent  recollections  of  a  trip  every  rod  of 
which  was  freighted  with  the  most  compelling 
interest  for  any  one,  and  for  an  American  with 
enduring  and  constant  pride  in  the  achievements 
of  his  own  countrymen. 

[394] 


BRICKS     WITHOUT     STRAW 


There  are  still  other  impressions,  many  of 
them,  big  and  little,  that  are  going  always  to 
stick  in  my  brain — the  smell  of  the  crisp  brown 
crusty  loaves,  mingling  with  the  smell  of  the 
wood  fires  at  the  bakery  where  half  a  million 
bread  rations  are  cooked  and  shipped  every  day, 
seven  days  a  week;  the  sight  at  the  motor  recep- 
tion park,  where  a  big  proportion  of  the  60,000 
motor  vehicles  of  all  sorts  that  are  called  for  in 
our  programme,  as  it  stands  now,  can  be  stored  at 
one  time;  the  miles  upon  miles  of  canned  goods 
through  which  I  have  passed,  with  the  boxes 
towering  in  walls  upon  either  side  of  me; 
the  cold-storage  chamber  as  big  as  a  cathedral, 
where  a  supply  of  5,000  tons  of  fresh  meat  is 
kept  on  hand  and  ready  for  use;  a  cemetery  for 
our  people,  only  a  few  months  old,  but  lovely 
already  with  flowers  and  grass  and  neat  gravel 
paths  between  the  mounds;  a  blacksmith  rivet- 
ing about  the  left  wrists  of  Chinese  labourers 
their  steel  identification  markers  so  that  there 
may  always  be  a  positive  and  certain  way  of 
knowing  just  who  is  who  in  the  gang,  since  to 
stupid  occidental  eyes  all  Chinamen  look  alike 
and  except  for  these  little  bangles  made  fast 
upon  the  arms  of  the  wearers  there  would 
be  complications  and  there  might  be  wilful 
falsifications  in  the  pay  rolls;  a  spectacled 
underofficer  hailing  us  in  perfect  but  plaintive 
English  from  a  group  of  prisoners  mending 
roads,  to  say  in  tones  of  deep  lament  that  he 
used  to  be  a  dentist  in  Baltimore  but  made  the 

r  S95  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

mistake  of  going  back  to  Germany  for  a  visit 
to  his  old  home  just  before  the  war  broke  out; 
a  CathoHc  chaplain  superintending  the  beauti- 
fying of  a  row  of  graves  of  Mohammedans  who 
had  died  in  our  service,  and  who  had  been  laid 
aw^ay  according  to  the  ritual  of  their  own  faith 
in  a  corner  of  a  burying  ground  where  Chris- 
tians and  Jews  are  sleeping  together;  a  maimed 
Belgian  soldier  with  three  medals  for  valour 
on  his  shirt  front,  cobbling  shoe  soles  in  the 
salvage  plant;  a  French  waiter  boy  in  a  head- 
quarters mess  learning  to  pick  out  the  chords 
of  Dixie  Land  on  an  American  negro's  home- 
made guitar;  a  room  in  the  staff  school  where  a 
former  member  of  the  Cabinet  of  the  United 
States,  an  ex-Congressman,  an  ex-police  com- 
missioner of  New  York  City  and  one  of  the 
richest  men  in  America,  all  four  of  them  volun- 
teer officers,  sat  at  their  lessons  with  their 
spines  fish-hooked  and  their  brows  knotted;  a 
nineteen-year-old  Yankee  apprentice  flyer  doing 
such  heart-stopping  stunts  in  a  practice  plane 
as  I  never  expect  to  see  equalled  by  any  veteran 
airman;  the  funeral,  on  the  same  day  and  at 
the  same  time,  of  one  of  his  mates,  who  had 
been  killed  by  a  fall  upon  the  field  over  which 
this  daring  youth  now  cavorted,  with  the 
coffin  in  an  ambulance  and  a  flag  over  the 
coffin,  and  behind  the  ambulance  the  firing 
squad,  the  Red  Cross  nurses  from  the  local 
hospital  and  a  company  of  his  fellow  cadets 
marching. 

[396] 


BRICKS    WITHOUT    STRAW 


And  seeing  all  these  sights  and  a  thousand 
more  like  unto  them  I  found  myself  as  I  finished 
my  tour  along  the  winding  lengths  of  the 
great  snake  we  call  the  Service  of  Supplies, 
wondering  just  who,  of  all  the  thousands  among 
the  men  that  labour  behind  the  men  behind  the 
guns,  deserve  of  their  countrymen  the  greatest 
meed  of  credit — the  high  salaried  executives 
out  of  civilian  life  who  dropped  careers  and 
comforts  and  hope  of  preferment  in  their 
professions  at  home,  to  give  of  the  genius  of 
their  brains  to  this  cause;  or  the  ofl&cers  of  our 
little  old  peacetime  Army  who  here  serve  so 
gladly  and  so  efficiently  upon  the  poor  pay 
that  we  give  our  officers,  without  hope  ever  of 
getting  a  proper  measure  of  national  apprecia- 
tion for  their  efforts,  since  this  war  is  so  nearly 
an  anonymous  war,  where  the  performances  of 
the  individual  are  swallowed  up  in  the  united 
efforts  of  the  mass;  or  the  skilled  railway  train- 
men volunteering  to  work  on  privates'  wages 
for  the  period  of  the  war;  or  the  plain  enlisted 
man  cheerfully,  eagerly,  enthusiastically  toiling 
here,  so  far  back  of  the  Front,  when  in  his 
heart  he  must  long  to  be  up  there  with  his 
fellows  where  the  big  guns  boom. 


[397'] 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
FROM  MY  OVERSEAS  NOTE-BOOK 

BLOWS  with  a  hammer  may  numb  one, 
but  it  is  the  bee-sting  that  quickens  the 
sensibilities  to  a  reahsation  of  what  is 
afoot.  That  is  why,  I  suppose,  the 
mighty  thing  called  war  is  for  me  always  sum- 
med up  in  small,  incidental  but  outstanding 
phases  of  it.  In  its  complete  aspect  it  is  too 
vast  to  be  comprehended  by  any  one  mind  or 
any  thousand  minds;  but  by  piecing  together 
the  lesser  things,  one  after  a  while  begins  in  a 
dim  groping  fashion  to  get  a  concept  of  the  en- 
tirety. 

When  I  went  up  to  Ypres,  it  was  not  the  un- 
utterable desolation  and  hideousness  of  what 
had  been  once  one  of  the  fairest  spots  on  earth 
that  especially  impressed  me:  possibly  because 
Ypres  to-day  is  a  horror  too  terrible  and  a 
tragedy  too  utter  for  human  contemplation 
save  at  the  risk  of  losing  one's  belief  in  the  ulti- 
mate wisdom  of  the  cosmic  scheme  of  things. 
Nor  was  it  the  wreck  of  the  great  Cloth  Hall 
which  even  now,  with  its  overthrown  walls  and 

[  398  ] 


FROM     MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

its  broken  lines  and  its  one  remaining  spindle  of 
ruined  tower,  manages  to  retain  a  suggestion  of 
the  matchless  beauty  which  forevermore  is  gone. 
Nor  yet  was  it  the  cemetery,  whereon  for  sheer, 
degenerate  malignity  the  Germans  targeted 
their  heavy  guns  until  they  had  broached  near- 
ly every  grave,  heaving  up  the  dead  to  sprawl 
upon  the  displaced  clods.  One  becomes,  in 
time,  accustomed  to  the  sight  of  dead  soldiers 
lying  where  they  have  fallen,  because  a  soldier 
accepts  the  chances  of  being  Killed  and  of  being 
left  untombed  after  he  is  killed.  The  dread 
spectacle  he  presented  is  part  and  parcel  of  the 
picture  of  war.  But  these  men  and  women  and 
babes  that  the  shells  dispossessed  from  their 
narrow  tenements  of  mould  had  died  peacefully 
in  their  beds  away  back  yonder — and  how  long 
ago  it  seems  now! — when  the  world  itself  was 
at  peace.  They  had  been  shrouded  in  their 
funeral  vestments;  they  had  been  laid  away 
with  cross  and  candle,  with  Book  and  prayer; 
over  them  slabs  of  the  everlasting  granite  had 
been  set,  and  flowers  had  been  planted  above 
them  and  memorials  set  up;  and  they  had  been 
left  there  beneath  the  kindly  loam,  cradled  for 
all  eternity  till  Gabriel's  Trump  should  blow. 

But  when  I  came  there  and  saw  what  Kul- 
tur  had  wrought  amongst  them — how  with  ex- 
quisite irony  the  blasts  had  shattered  grave 
after  grave  whose  stones  bore  the  carved  words 
Held  in  Perpetuity  and  how  grandmothers  and 
grandsires  and  the  pitiable  small  bones  of  little 

[  399  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

children  had  been  flung  forth  out  of  the  gaping 
holes  and  left  to  moulder  in  the  rags  of  their 
cerements  where  all  who  passed  that  way  might 
see  them — why,  it  was  a  blasphemy  and  an  in- 
decency and  a  sacrilege  which  no  man,  behold- 
ing it,  could  ever,  so  long  as  he  lived,  hope  to 
forget. 

And  yet,  as  I  just  said,  it  was  not  the  defile- 
ment of  the  cemetery  of  Ypres  which  impressed 
me  most  when  I  went  up  to  Ypres.  It  was  the 
lamp-posts. 

Ypres  had  been  studded  thick  with  lamp- 
posts; ornamental  and  decorative  standards  of 
wrought  iron  they  were,  spaced  at  intervals  of 
forty  yards  or  so  for  the  length  of  every  street 
and  on  both  sides  of  every  street.  And  every 
single  lamp-post  in  Ypres,  as  I  took  the  pains 
to  see  for  myself,  had  been  struck  by  shells  or 
by  flying  fragments  of  shells.  Some  had  been 
hit  once  or  twice,  some  had  been  quite  hewn 
down,  some  had  been  twisted  into  shapeless 
sworls  of  tortured  metal;  not  one  but  was 
scathed  after  one  mutilating  fashion  or  an- 
other. 

In  other  words,  during  these  four  years  of 
bombardment  so  many  German  shells  had  de- 
scended upon  Ypres  that  no  object  in  it  of  the 
thickness  of  six  inches  at  its  base  and  say,  two 
inches  at  its  top,  had  escaped  being  struck. 
Or  putting  it  another  way,  had  all  these  shells 
been  fired  through  a  space  of  hours  instead  of 
through   a  space  of  years,   they   would  have 

[400] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

rained  down  on  the  empty  town  with  the  thick- 
ness and  the  frequency  of  drops  in  a  heavy 
thunder-shower . 

Never  w  as  the  Hun  quite  so  thorough  as  when 
he  was  punishing  some  helpless  thing  that  could 
not  fight  back. 


Riding  along  through  France  on  a  Sunday, 
these  times,  one  is  reasonably  certain  to  meet 
many  little  girls  wearing  their  white  commun- 
ion frocks,  and  many  Chinamen  under  umbrel- 
las. 

The  latter  mostly  hail  from  Indo-China.  The 
French  imported  them  in  thousands  for  service 
in  the  labour  battalions  behind  the  lines.  Dur- 
ing the  week,  dressed  in  nondescript  mixtures 
of  native  garb  and  cast-off  uniforms,  they  work 
at  road-mending  or  at  ditch-digging  or  on  truck- 
loading  jobs.  On  Sundays  they  dress  them- 
selves up  in  their  best  clothes  and  stroll  about 
the  country-side.  And  rain  or  shine,  each  one 
brings  along  with  him  his  treasured  umbrella 
and  carries  it  unfurled  above  his  proud  head. 
It  never  is  a  Chinese  umbrella,  either,  but  in- 
variably a  cheap  black  affair  of  local  manufac- 
ture. Go  into  one  of  the  barracks  w^here  these 
yellow  men  are  housed  and  at  the  head  of  each 
bunk  there  hangs  a  black  umbrella,  which  the 
owner  guards  as  his  most  darling  possession. 
If  he  dies  I  suppose  it  is  buried  with  him. 

Nobody    knows    here    why    every    Sunday- 

[401] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

Chinaman  sports  an  umbrella,  unless  it  be  that 
in  his  Oriental  mind  he  has  decided  that  pos- 
session of  such  a  thing  stamps  him  as  a  person 
of  travel  and  culture  who,  like  any  true  cosmo- 
politan, is  desirous  of  conforming  to  the  cus- 
toms of  the  country  to  which  he  has  been  trans- 
ported. But  a  Frenchman,  if  careless,  some- 
times leaves  his  umbrella  behind  when  he  goes 
forth  for  a  promenade;  a  Chinaman  in  France, 
never. 

When  a  ship-load  of  these  chaps  lands  they 
are  first  taken  to  a  blacksmith  shop  and  upon 
the  left  wrist  of  each  is  securely  and  perma- 
nently fastened  a  slender  steel  circlet  bearing  a 
token  on  which  is  stamped  the  wearer's  name 
and  his  number.  So  long  as  he  is  in  the  em- 
ploy of  the  State  this  little  band  must  stay  on 
his  arm.  It  is  the  one  sure  means  of  identify- 
ing him  and  of  preventing  payroll  duplications. 

With  the  marker  dangling  at  his  sleeve-end 
he  makes  straightway  for  a  shop  and  buys  him- 
self a  black  cotton  umbrella  and  from  that  time 
forward,  wherever  he  goes,  his  steel  bangle  and 
his  umbrella  go  with  him.  He  cannot  part 
from  one  and  not  for  worlds  would  he  part 
from  the  other. 

One  Sunday  afternoon  in  a  village  in  the 
south  of  France  I  saw  that  rarest  of  sights — a 
drunken  Chinaman.  He  wiggled  and  waggled 
as  he  walked,  and  once  he  sat  down  very  hard, 
smiling  foolishly  the  while,  but  he  never  lost 
his  hold  on  the  handle  of  his  umbrella  and 

[402] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

when  he  had  picked  himself  up,  the  black  bulge 
of  it  was  bobbing  tipsily  above  his  tipsy  head 
as  he  went  weaving  down  the  road  behind  a 
mile-long  procession  of  his  fellows,  all  march- 
ing double  file  beneath  their  raised  umbrellas. 

Whisper — there  is  current  a  scandalous  ru- 
mour touching  on  these  little  moon-faced  allies 
of  ours.  It  is  said  that  among  them  every 
fourth  man,  about,  isn't  a  man  at  all.  He's  a 
woman  wearing  a  man's  garb  and  drawing  a 
man's  pay;  or  rather  she  is,  if  we  are  going  to 
keep  the  genders  on  straight.  But  since  the 
women  work  just  as  hard  as  the  men  do  no- 
body seems  to  bother  about  the  deceit.  They 
may  not  have  equal  suffrage  over  in  Indo- 
China  but  the  two  sexes  there  seem  to  have  a 
way  of  adjusting  the  industrial  problems  of  the 
day  on  a  mutually  satisfactory  basis  of  under- 
standing. 

4(  4e  %  :|c  4; 

"Piccadilly  Circus.  This  way  to  Swan  and 
Edgar's." 

The  sign-board  was  the  top  of  a  jam  box. 
The  upright  to  which  it  was  nailed  was  the 
shell-riddled  trunk  of  a  plane  tree  with  one 
sprig  of  dried  mistletoe  clinging  in  a  crotch 
where  limbs  had  been,  like  a  tuft  of  dead  beard 
on  a  mummy's  chin.  Piccadilly  Circus  was  a 
roughly-rounded  spot  at  a  cross-road  where 
the  grey  and  sticky  mud — greyer  than  any  mud 
you  stay-at-homes  ever  saw;  stickier  than  any 
mud  you  ever  saw — made  a  little  sea  which 

[  403  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

quaked  and  shimmered  greasily  like  a  quick- 
sand. The  way  to  Swan  and  Edgar's  was 
down  a  communication  trench  with  shored  sides 
to  it,  so  that  the  semi-liquid  walls  could  not 
cave  in,  and  with  duck  boards  set  in  it  upon 
spiles  for  footing,  so  that  men  passing  through 
would  not  be  engulfed  and  drowned  in  the 
quagmire  beneath. 

So  much  for  the  immediate  setting.  The  ad- 
jacent surroundings  were  of  a  pattern  to  match 
the  chosen  sample.  All  about  on  every  side  for 
miles  on  end,  was  a  hell  of  grey  mud,  here  up- 
reared  into  ridges  and  there  depressed  into 
holes;  and  the  ridges  heaved  up  to  meet  a  sky- 
line of  the  same  sad  colour  as  themselves,  and 
the  holes  were  like  the  stale  dead  craters  of  a 
stale  dead  moon. 

Elsewhere  in  the  land,  spring  had  come  weeks 
before,  but  here  the  only  green  was  the  green 
of  the  skum  on  the  grey  water  in  the  bottoms 
of  the  shell-fissures;  the  only  living  things  were 
the  ravens  that  cawed  over  the  wasted  land- 
scape, and  the  great,  fat,  torpid  rats  with  mud 
glued  in  their  whiskers  and  their  scaled  tails 
caked  with  mud,  that  scuttled  in  and  out 
of  the  long-abandoned  German  pill-boxes  or 
through  holes  in  the  rusted  iron  sides  of  three 
dismantled  British  tanks.  For  lines  of  trees 
there  were  up-ended  wrecks  of  motor  trucks 
and  ambulances;  for  the  hum  of  bees,  was  the 
hum  of  an  occasional  sniper's  bullet;  for  the 
tap  of  the  wood-pecker,  was  the  rat-tat  of  ma- 

[  40-i  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

chine  guns  marking  time  for  a  skirmish  miles 
away;  for  growing  crops,  in  these  once  fecund 
and  prolific  stretches  of  the  Flanders  flat-lands, 
there  were  eighty-thousand  unburied  dead,  all 
encysted  in  the  mud  except  where  the  gouging 
shells  had  uprooted  them  out  of  the  loblolly. 
And  from  far  up  on  the  rise  toward  Passchen- 
daele  came  the  dull  regurgitations  of  the  big 
guns,  as  though  the  war  had  sickened  of  its 
own  horrors  and  was  retching  in  its  nausea. 

What  now  was  here  must,  in  a  measure,  al- 
ways be  here.  For  surely  no  husbandman 
would  dare  ever  to  drive  his  ploughshare 
through  a  field  which  had  become  a  stinking 
corruption;  w^here  in  every  furrow  he  w^ould  in- 
evitably turn  up  mortal  aw^fulness,  and  where 
any  moment  his  steel  might  strike  against  one 
of  the  countless  unexploded  shells  which  fill  the 
earth  like  horrid  plums  in  a  yet  more  horrid 
pudding. 

You  couldn't  give  this  desolation  a  name; 
our  language  yields  no  word  to  fit  it,  no  ad- 
jective to  cap  it.  Yet  right  here  in  the  stark 
and  rotten  middle  of  it  a  British  Tommy  had 
stopped  to  have  his  little  joke.  Was  he  down- 
hearted.'* No!  And  so  to  prove  he  wasn't, — 
that  his  spirits  were  high  and  that  his  racial 
gift  of  humour  was  unimpaired,  he  stuck  up  a 
sign  of  sprawled  lettering  and  it  said: 

"Piccadilly  Circus.  This  way  to  Swan  and 
Edgar's." 

Mister  Kaiser,  you  might  have  known,   if 

[  405  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

your  mental  processes  hadn't  been  stuck  on 
skew- wise,  forty  ways  for  Sunday,  that  you 
could  never  break  through  an  army  of  good 
sports  who  make  jokes  at  death  and  coin  gibes 
at  what  might  well  drive  less  hardy  souls  to 
madness. 

Hi:  Hf  4i  H/i  :¥ 

Mighty  few  men  outwardly  conform  to  the 
roles  they  actually  fill  in  life.  I  am  not  speak- 
ing of  drum-majors  in  bands  or  tattooed  men 
in  side-shows  or  floor-walkers  in  department 
stores.  Such  parties  are  picked  for  their  jobs 
because,  physically,  they  live  up  to  the  popu- 
lar conception;  perhaps  I  should  say  the  popu- 
lar demand.  I  am  speaking  of  the  run  of  the 
species.  A  successful  poet  is  very  apt  to  look 
like  an  unsuccessful  paper-hanger  and  I  have 
known  a  paper-hanger  who  was  the  spittin' 
image  of  a  free  versifier. 

I  think,  though,  of  two  men  I  have  met  over 
here  who  were  designed  by  nature  and  by  en- 
vironment to  typify  exactly  what  they  are. 
One  is  Haig  and  the  other  is  Pershing.  Either 
would  make  the  perfect  model  for  a  statue  to 
portray  the  common  notion  of  a  field-marshal. 
General  Sir  Douglas  Haig  is  a  picture,  drawn  to 
scale,  of  the  kind  of  British  general  that  the 
novelists  love  to  describe;  in  mannerism,  in  fig- 
ure, in  size,  in  bearing,  in  colouring  and  expres- 
sion, he  is  all  of  that.  And  by  the  same  tokens 
Pershing  in  every  imaginable  particular  is  the 

[406] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

typical  American  fighting-man.  Incidentally  I 
might  add  that  these  two  men  are  two  of  the 
handsomest  and  most  splendid  martial  figures 
I  have  ever  met.  They  say  Haig  is  the  best- 
dressed  officer  in  the  British  army  and  that  is 
saying  a  good  deal,  considering  that  the  officers 
of  the  British  army  are  the  best  dressed  officers 
of  any  army. 

Pershing  has  the  poise  and  port  of  a  West 
Point  cadet;  has  a  cadet's  waist-line  and  shoul- 
der-lines, too.  A  man  may  keep  a  youthful 
face  but  in  the  curves  of  his  back  is  where 
nearly  always  he  betrays  his  age.  Look  at  Per- 
shing's back  without  knowing  who  he  was  and 
you  would  put  him  down  as  an  athlete  in  his 
early  twenties. 

I  have  taken  lunch  with  General  Sir  Douglas 
Haig,  and  his  staff,  including  his  Presbyterian 
chaplain  who  is  an  inevitable  member  of  the 
commander's  official  family,  and  I  have  dined 
with  General  Pershing  and  his  staff,  as  Persh- 
ing's guest.  When  you  break  bread  with  a 
man  at  his  table  you  get  a  better  chance  to 
appraise  him  than  you  would  be  likely  to  get 
did  you  casually  meet  him  elsewhere.  From 
each  headquarters  I  brought  away  the  settled 
conviction  that  I  had  been  in  the  company  of 
one  of  the  staunchest,  most  dependable,  most 
capable  personalities  to  whom  authority  and 
power  were  ever  entrusted.  Different  as  they 
were  in  speech  and  in  gesture,  from  each  there 
radiated  a  certain  thing  which  the  other  like- 

[407] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

wise  possessed  and  expressed  without  knowing 
that  he  expressed  it — a  sense  of  a  stupendous, 
unremitting  responsibihty,  gladly  accepted  and 
well  discharged;  an  appreciation  of  having  in 
his  hands  a  job  to  do,  the  tools  for  the  doing  of 
which  are  human  beings,  and  in  the  doing  of 
which,  should  he  make  a  mistake,  the  error  will 
be  charged  up  against  him  in  figures  of  human 
life. 

Always  I  shall  remember  one  outstanding 
sentence  which  Haig  uttered  and  one  which 
Pershing  uttered.  Curiously  enough,  each  was 
addressing  himself  to  the  same  subject,  to  wit: 
the  American  soldier.    Haig  said: 

"The  spirit  of  the  American  soldier  as  I  have 
seen  him  over  here  since  your  country  entered 
the  war,  is  splendid.  When  he  first  came  I 
was  struck  by  his  good  humour,  his  unfailing 
cheerfulness,  his  modesty,  and  most  of  all  by 
his  eager,  earnest  desire  to  learn  the  business  of 
war  as  speedily  and  as  thoroughly  as  possible. 
Now  as  a  British  commander,  I  am  very,  very 
glad  of  the  opportunity  to  fight  alongside  of 
him — so  glad,  that  I  do  not  find  the  words  off- 
hand, to  express  the  depth  of  my  confidence  in 
the  steadfastness  and  the  intelligence  and  the 
courage  he  is  every  day  displaying." 

Pershing  said: 

"When  I  think,  as  I  do  constantly  think,  of 
the  behaviour  of  our  men  fighting  here  in  a  for- 
eign land;  of  the  disciplined  cheerfulness  with 
which  they  have  faced  discomforts,  of  the  con- 

[  4-08  ] 


FROM     MY    OVERSEAS    N  O  T  E  -  B  O  O  K 

stant  determination  with  which  they  have  con- 
fronted difficulties,  and  of  the  splendid  dash 
with  which  they  have  met  the  enemy  in  bat- 
tle, I  cannot  speak  what  is  in  my  mind  because 
my  emotions  of  gratitude  are  so  great  they 
keep  me  from  speaking  of  these  things." 


At  a  French  railway  station  any  day  one 
sees  weeping  women  but  they  do  not  weep  un- 
til after  the  trains  which  carry  their  men-folk 
back  to  the  trenches  have  gone.  To  this  rule  I 
have  never  seen  an  exception. 

A  soldier  who  has  finished  his  leave — a  per- 
missionaire  the  French  call  him — comes  to  the 
station,  returning  to  his  duties  at  the  Front. 
It  may  be  he  is  a  staff  officer  gorgeous  in  gold 
lace.  It  may  be  he  is  a  recruit  of  this  year's 
class  with  the  fleece  of  adolescence  still  upon 
his  cheeks  but  with  the  grave  assurance  of  a 
veteran  in  his  gait.  Or  it  may  be  that  he  is  a 
grizzled  territorial  bent  forward  by  one  of  those 
enormous  packs  which  his  sort  always  tote 
about  with  them;  and  to  me  this  last  one  of 
the  three  presents  the  most  heart-moving  spec- 
tacle of  any.  Nearly  always  he  looks  so  tired 
and  his  uniform  is  so  stained  and  so  worn  and 
so  wrinkled!  I  mean  to  make  no  cheap  gibe  at 
the  expense  of  a  nation  which  has  fine-tooth- 
combed  her  land  for  man  power  to  stand  the 
drain  of  four  years  of  war  when  I  say  that  ac- 
cording to  my  observations  the  back-line  re- 

[409] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

serves  of  France  in  1918  are  a  million  middle- 
aged  men  whose  feet  hurt  them. 

Be  he  staff  officer  though,  or  beardless  youth 
or  fifty-year-old  rear-guard  it  is  certain  that  his 
women-folk  will  accompany  him  to  the  station 
to  tell  him  farewell.  He  has  had  his  week  at 
home.  By  to-night  he  will  be  back  again  at 
the  Front,  in  the  mud  and  the  filth  and  the  cold 
and  the  wet.  By  to-morrow  he  may  be  dead. 
But  there  is  never  a  tear  shed  at  parting.  He 
kisses  his  wife  or  his  mother  or  his  sister  or  all 
of  them;  he  hugs  to  his  breast  his  babies,  if  he 
has  babies.  Then  he  climbs  aboard  a  car 
which  already  is  crowded  with  others  like  him, 
and  as  the  train  draws  away  the  women  run 
down  the  platform  alongside  the  train,  smiling 
and  blowing  kisses  at  him  and  waving  their 
hands  and  shouting  good-byes  and  bidding  him 
to  do  this  or  that  or  the  other  thing. 

And  then,  when  the  train  has  disappeared 
they  drop  down  where  they  are  and  cry  their 
hearts  out.  I  have  witnessed  this  spectacle  a 
thousand  times,  I  am  sure,  and  always  the 
sight  of  it  renews  my  admiration  for  the  women 
of  what  I  veritably  believe  to  be  the  most  pa- 
tient and  the  most  steadfast  race  of  beings  on 
the  face  of  the  globe. 

*  *  *  *  * 

In  early  June,  I  went  up  to  where  the  first 
division  of  ours  to  be  sent  into  the  British  lines 
for  its  seasoning  under  fire  was  bedded  down  in 

[  410] 


FROM     MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

billets  hard  by  the  Flanders  border;  and  there 
I  saw  a  curious  thing.  There  were  Canadians 
near  at  hand,  and  Australians  and  New  Zea- 
landers  and  one  might  naturally  suppose  the 
Yankee  lads  would  by  preference  fraternise 
with  these  soldiers  from  the  Dominions  and  the 
Colonies  who  in  speech,  in  mode  of  life  and  in 
habit  of  thought  were  really  their  brothers  un- 
der the  skin. 

Not  at  all.  In  many  cases,  if  not  in  a  major- 
ity of  cases,  that  came  under  my  notice  I  found 
Americans  chumming  with  London  Cockneys, 
trading  tobacco  for  cheese;  prunes  for  jam, 
cigarettes  for  captured  souvenirs;  guying  the 
Londoners  because  they  drank  tea  in  the  after- 
noons and  being  guyed  because  they  themselves 
wanted  coffee  in  the  mornings. 

The  phenomenon  I  figured  out  to  my  own 
satisfaction  according  to  this  process  of  deduc- 
tion: First,  that  the  American  and  the  Cock- 
ney had  discovered  that  jointly  they  shared 
the  same  gorgeous  sense  of  humour,  albeit  ex- 
pressed in  dissimilar  ways;  second,  that  each 
had  found  out  the  other  was  full  of  sporting  in- 
stincts, which  made  another  tie  between  them; 
and  third  and  perhaps  most  cogent  reason  of 
all,  that  whatever  the  Yankee  might  say,  using 
his  own  slang  to  say  it,  sounded  unutterably 
funny  in  the  Cockney's  ear,  and  what  the 
Cockney  said  on  any  subject,  in  his  dialect, 
was  as  good  as  a  vaudeville  show  to  the  Yan- 
kee. 

[411] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

Personally  I  do  not  believe  it  was  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  strain  calling  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  strain, 
because  the  American  was  as  likely  to  be  of 
Italian  or  Irish  or  Jewish  or  Teutonic  or  Slavic 
antecedents  as  he  was  to  be  of  pure  English 
ancestry.  I  am  sure  it  v/as  not  the  common 
use  by  both  of  the  same  language — with  varia- 
tions on  the  part  of  either.  But  I  am  sure  that 
it  was  the  joyous  prospect  of  getting  free  and 
unlimited  entertainment  out  of  the  conversa- 
tions of  a  new  pal. 

Anyway  our  soldiers  are  cementing  us  to- 
gether with  a  cement  that  will  bind  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking races  in  a  union  which  can  never 
be  sundered,  I  am  sure  of  that  much. 


The  madness  w^hich  descended  upon  our  ene- 
mies when  they  started  this  war  would  appear 
to  have  taken  a  turn  where  it  commonly  mani- 
fests itself  in  acts  of  stark  degeneracy.  Every 
day  I  am  hearing  tales  which  prove  the  truth 
of  this.  If  there  was  only  one  such  story  com- 
ing to  light  now  and  then  we  might  figure  the 
terrible  thing  as  proof  of  the  nastiness  of  an  in- 
dividual pervert  manifesting  itself;  but  where 
the  evidence  piles  up  in  a  constantly  accumu- 
lating mass  it  makes  out  a  case  so  complete 
one  is  bound  to  conclude  that  a  demoniacal 
rottenness  is  running  through  their  ranks,  af- 
fecting officer  and  men  alike.  For  the  sake  of 
the   good   name   of   mankind    in   general    one 

[412  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

strives  not  to  accept  all  these  tales  but  the 
bulk  of  them  must  be  true. 

A  young  tank-ofBcer  of  ours  whom  I  knew 
before  the  war  in  New  York,  where  he  was  a 
rising  lawyer,  and  whom  I  knew  to  be  truthful, 
tells  me  that  an  honest  appearing  British  non- 
com  in  turn,  told  him  that  a  week  or  two  ago 
the  Britishers  having  cleaned  up  a  nest  of  en- 
emy machine  guns,  sent  a  detail  out  to  bury 
the  dead.  The  squad  had  buried  tw^o  Germans, 
then  they  came  upon  the  body  of  one  of  their 
own  men  who  had  fallen  in  the  fighting  two 
days  earlier  when  the  Britishers  made  their 
first  attack  upon  the  Germans  only  to  be  forced 
back  and  then  to  come  again  with  better  suc- 
cess. The  sergeant  who  stood  sponsor  for  the 
narrative  declared  that  as  he  bent  over  the 
dead  Englishman  to  unfasten  the  identification 
tag  from  the  wrist,  he  saw  that  something  was 
fastened  to  the  dead  man's  arm  and  that  this 
something  was  partly  hidden  beneath  the  body. 
Becoming  instantly  suspicious,  he  warned  the 
other  men  to  stand  back  and  then  kneeling 
down  and  feeling  about  cautiously,  he  found  a 
bomb  so  devised  that  a  slight  jar  would  set  it 
off.  Before  they  fell  back,  the  surviving  Ger- 
mans had  attached  this  devilish  thing  to  a 
corpse  with  the  benevolent  intent  of  blowing 
to  bits  the  first  man  among  the  victors  who 
should  undertake  to  move  the  poor  clay  with 
intent  to  give  it  decent  burial. 

Our  men  have  been  warned  against  gathering 

[413  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

up  German  helmets  and  German  rifles  in  places 
from  which  the  enemy  has  retired,  because  such 
souvenirs  have  a  way  of  blowing  up  in  the  find- 
ers' hands  by  reason  of  the  explosive  grenades 
that  have  been  attached  to  them  and  hidden 
beneath  them  with  the  cap  so  arranged  that  a 
tug  at  the  wired-on  connection  will  set  off  the 
charge;  but  this  crowning  atrocity  shows  they 
are  making  improvements  in  their  system. 
From  sawing  down  fruit  trees,  from  shoveling 
filth  in  the  drinking  wells,  from  wantonly  de- 
stroying the  villages  which  for  years  have  shel- 
tered them,  from  laying  waste  the  lands  which 
they  are  being  forced  now  to  surrender  back 
into  the  hands  of  their  rightful  proprietors,  the 
ingenious  Hun  has  progressed  in  his  military 
education  to  where  he  makes  dead  men  serve 
his  purposes.  Personally,  I  have  heard  of  but 
one  act  to  match  this  one.  An  American  troop- 
er entered  a  half -wrecked  hamlet  which  the  re- 
treating Germans  had  just  evacuated,  and  on 
going  into  a  villager's  house,  saw  a  china  doll 
lying  upon  a  cupboard  shelf,  and  saw  that, 
hitched  to  the  doll,  was  one  of  these  touchy 
hand-bombs.  Now,  it  is  onlv  reasonable  to 
assume  the  German  who  planned  this  surprise 
went  upon  the  assumption  that  the  doll  would 
be  the  prized  possession  of  some  French  child 
and  that  when  the  family  who  owned  the  house 
found  their  way  back  to  it,  the  child  would  run 
first  of  all  to  recover  her  treasured  dollie  and 
picking  it  up  would  be  killed  or  mangled,  there- 

[  414  ] 


FROM     MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

by  scoring  one  more  triumph,  if  a  small  one, 
for  Vaterland  and  Kaiser. 


To  a  dressing  station  behind  our  front  lines 
up  beyond  St.  Mihiel — so  I  am  reliably  in- 
formed— our  stretcher-bearers  brought  two 
wounded  prisoners  and  laid  them  down.  One 
of  the  pair  was  a  Prussian  captain  with  a  hole 
in  his  breast;  the  other  a  weedy  boy-private 
with  a  shattered  leg.  There  were  two  surgeons 
at  work  here — a  Frenchman  and  an  American. 

As  the  Frenchman  bent  over  the  captain,  in 
the  joy  of  service  forgetting  for  the  moment 
that  the  man  lying  before  him  was  his  enemy 
and  filled  only  with  a  desire  to  save  life  and  re- 
lieve human  agony,  the  Prussian  who  seeming- 
ly had  been  unconscious,  opened  his  eyes  in 
recognition.  Thereupon  the  surgeon,  making 
ready  to  strip  away  the  first-aid  dressings  from 
the  punctured  chest,  spoke  to  his  patient  in 
French  saying  he  trusted  the  captain  did  not 
suffer  great  pain.  The  reply  was  Prussianesque. 
The  wounded  man  cleared  his  throat  and  spat 
full  in  the  Frenchman's  face. 

I  hope  I  am  not  blood-thirsty,  but  I  am 
happy  to  be  able  to  relate  a  satisfactory  se- 
quel. The  Frenchman,  who  must  have  been  a 
gentleman  as  well  as  a  soldier,  stood  true  to 
the  creed  of  an  honourable  and  merciful  call- 
ing. He  merely  put  up  his  hand  and  without  a 
word  wiped  the  spittle  from  his  face  which  had 

[415  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

grown  white  as  death  under  the  strain  of  en- 
during the  insult.  But  an  American  stretcher- 
bearer  who  had  witnessed  the  act,  snatched  up 
a  rifle  from  a  heap  of  captured  accoutrements 
near  the  door  of  the  dugout  and  brought  the 
butt  of  it  down,  full  force,  across  the  hateful, 
gloating  mouth  of  the  Prussian. 

For  contrast,  mark  the  behaviour  of  the  boy- 
soldier  who  also  had  just  been  borne  in.  It  was 
the  American  surgeon  who  took  the  private's 
case  in  hand.  Now  this  American  surgeon  was 
of  pure  German  descent  and  bore  a  German 
name  and  he  spoke  well  the  tongue  of  his  an- 
cestors. So  naturally  he  addressed  the  groan- 
ing lad  in  German. 

Between  gasps  of  pain,  the  lad  told  his  in- 
terrogator that  he  was  a  Saxon,  that  his  age 
was  eighteen  and  that  he  had  been  in  service 
at  the  Front  for  nearly  a  year.  Even  in  the 
midst  of  his  suffering  he  showed  pleasure  at 
finding  among  his  captors  a  man  who  knew 
and  could  use  the  only  language  which  he  him- 
self knew.  Noting  this,  the  surgeon  continued 
to  address  the  youngster  as  he  made  ready  to  do 
to  the  mangled  limb  what  was  needful  to  be  done. 

As  his  skilled  fingers  touched  the  wound, 
some  sub-conscious  instinct  quickened  perhaps 
by  the  fact  that  he  had  just  employed  the 
mother-speech  of  his  parents  set  him  to  whis- 
tling between  his  teeth  a  song  he  had  known  as 
a  child.  And  that  song  was  Die  Wackt  am  Rhein. 

Under  his  ministering  hands  the  young  Saxon 

[416] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

twitched  and  jerked.  Perhaps  he  thought  the 
surgeon  meant  to  gloat  over  him,  captured  and 
maimed  for  Hfe  as  he  was;  perhaps  it  was  an- 
other emotion  which  prompted  him  to  cry  out 
in  a  half -strangled  shriek: 

"Don't  whistle  that  song — don't!" 
"I  am  sorry,"  said  the  American,  "I  did  not 
mean  to  hurt  your  feelings.     I  thought  you 
might  like  to  hear  it  —  that  it  might  soothe 

you." 

"Like  to  hear  it.'^  Never!"  panted  the  lad. 
"I  hate  it — I  hate  it — I  hate  it!" 

"Surely  though  you  love  your  country  and 
your  Emperor,  don't  you?"  pressed  the  Ameri- 
can, anxious  to  fathom  the  psychology  of  the 
prisoner's  nature. 

"I  love  my  country — yes,"  answered  the  boy, 
"but  as  to  the  Kaiser,  to  him  I  would  do 
this — ."  And  he  drew  a  finger  across  his  throat 
with  a  quick,  sharp  stroke. 


I*  n*  T* 


I  am  putting  down  this  scrap  of  narrative  in 
a  room  in  a  hotel  that  is  two  hundred  years  old, 
in  the  heart  of  a  wonderful  old  Norman  city 
and  while  I  am  writing  it,  twenty  miles  away, 
in  front  of  Montdidier,  they  are  giving  my 
friend  the  kind  of  funeral  he  asked  for. 

I  call  him  my  friend,  although  I  never  saw 
him  until  four  weeks  ago.  He  was  a  man  you 
would  want  for  your  friend.  Physically  and 
every  other  way,  he  was  the  sort  of  man  that 

[417] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

Richard  Harding  Davis  used  to  love  to  describe 
in  his  stories  about  soldiers  of  fortune.  He 
seemed  to  have  stepped  right  out  of  the  pages 
of  one  of  Davis's  books — he  was  tall  and 
straight  and  slender,  as  handsome  a  man  as 
ever  I  looked  at  and  a  soldier  in  every  inch  of 
him.  The  other  oiOficers  of  the  regiment  ad- 
mired him  but  his  men,  as  I  have  reason  to 
know,  worshipped  him — and  that,  in  the  final 
appraisals,  is  the  test  of  an  oflScer  and  a  gentle- 
man in  any  army. 

I  met  him  on  the  day  when  I  rode  up  into 
Picardy  to  attach  myself  bag  and  baggage — 
one  bag  and  not  much  baggage — to  a  foot-regi- 
ment of  our  old  regular  army,  then  moving  into 
the  battle-lines  to  take  over  a  sector  from  the 
French.  He  had  a  Danish  name  and  his  fa- 
ther, I  believe,  was  a  Dane;  but  he  was  born  in 
a  Western  state  nearly  forty  years  ago.  In  the 
Spanish  war  he  was  a  kid  private;  saw  service 
as  a  non-com  in  the  Philippine  mess;  tried  civil 
life  afterwards  and  couldn't  endure  it;  went  to 
Central  America  and  took  a  hand  in  some  tin- 
pot  revolution  or  other;  came  home  again  and 
was  in  business  for  a  year  or  so,  which  was  as 
long  as  his  adventurous  soul  could  stand  a 
stand-still  life;  then  moved  across  the  line  into 
the  Canadian  Northwest  and  got  a  job  in  the 
Royal  Mounted  Police.  In  1914,  when  the  war 
broke,  he  volunteered  in  a  Canadian  battalion 
as  a  private.  On  our  entrance  into  the  con- 
flict he  was  a  major  of  the  Dominion  Forces. 

[418  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

He  resigned  this  commission  forthwith,  hurried 
back  to  the  States  and  joined  up  at  the  first  re- 
cruiting office  he  saw  after  he  reached  New 
York.  And  now  when  I  met  him,  he  had  his 
majority  in  an  American  regiment  which  has  a 
long  and  a  most  honourable  record  behind  it. 

During  this  past  month  I  saw  a  good  deal  of 
him.  So  far  as  I  could  judge,  he  had  one,  and 
just  one,  bit  of  affectation  about  him — if  you 
could  call  it  that.  He  wore  always  the  British 
trench  helmet  that  he  had  worn  in  the  Cana- 
dian forces  and  he  liked  to  finger  the  gap  in  its 
brim  where  a  bit  of  shrapnel  chipped  it  as 
he  climbed  up  Vimy  Ridge,  and  he  liked  to  tell 
about  that  day  of  Vimy  so  glorious  and  so 
tragic  for  the  valorous  whelps  of  the  British 
lion  who  hail  from  our  own  side  of  the  blue 
water.  He  had  another  small  vanity  too,  as  I 
now  understand — a  vanity  which  to-day  is  be- 
ing gratified. 

Six  days  ago  I  left  the  regiment  to  spend  a 
day  and  a  night  with  a  battery  of  five-inch 
guns  just  west  of  Montdidier.  As  I  was  start- 
ing off  he  hailed  me  and  we  made  an  engage- 
ment for  a  dinner  together  here  in  this  town 
where  the  food  is  very,  very  good,  said  dinner 
to  take  place  "sometime  soon."  He  was  stand- 
ing in  the  road  as  I  rode  away  and  when  I 
looked  back  out  of  the  car  he  waved  his  hand 
at  me. 

The  village  where  I  stayed  for  that  night 
and  the  following  day,  formed  a  hinge  in  the 

[419] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

line  that  our  forward  forces  had  taken  over.  It 
was  within  two  miles  of  the  German  trenches 
and  within  three  or  four  miles  of  some  of  their 
heavy  batteries.  Through  the  night  I  slept  at 
battalion  headquarters,  in  the  only  house  in 
the  town  which  up  until  then  had  escaped  seri- 
ous damage  from  German  gunfire. 

Coming  back  again  to  my  regiment — as  I 
shall  call  it — on  the  second  day  following,  I 
learned  that  almost  immediately  after  my  de- 
parture the  batteries  I  left  in  and  near  this  vil- 
lage had  been  ordered  to  take  up  a  prepared 
position  in  a  patch  of  woods  a  mile  farther  in 
the  rear  and  that  my  friend's  battalion  had 
gone  up  to  hold  the  town  and  to  act  as  a  re- 
serve unit  there  until  its  turn  should  come  to 
relieve  part  of  another  infantry  regiment  in  the 
trenches  proper.  So  I  knew  that  in  all  proba- 
bility he  now  was  domiciled  in  the  cottage 
where  I  had  slept  the  night  previous.  As  it 
turned  out  my  guess  was  right — that  was 
where  he  was.  Three  days  ago  I  borrowed  a 
side-car  and  ran  on  down  here  where  I  could 
get  in  touch  with  the  divisional  censor  and  file 
some  of  the  copy  I  have  been  grinding  out 
lately. 

Yesterday  afternoon  in  the  main  square  1 
bumped  into  the  adjutant  of  my  regiment  and 
with  him,  one  of  the  French  liaison  oflBcers  at- 
tached to  the  regiment. 

"Hello,"  I  said,  "what  brings  you  two  down 
here?" 

■[  420  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

"We  came  to  get  some  flowers  for  the  funeral 
to-morrow,"  the  adjutant  told  me. 

"Whose  funeral?"  I  asked. 

When  they  told  me  whose  funeral,  I  was 
stunned  for  a  moment.  From  them  I  learned 
when  my  friend  died  and  how.  And  this,  then, 
is  the  story  of  it: 

Night  before  last  he  and  his  battalion  liaison 
officer,  a  Frenchman  of  course,  and  his  battalion 
adjutant  were  eating  supper  in  that  same  small 
red  brick  house  which  had  sheltered  me  for  a 
night.  The  Germans  had  been  punishing  the 
place  at  long  distance;  now  there  was  a  lull  in 
the  bombardment,  but  just  as  the  three  of  them 
finished  their  meal,  the  enemy  reopened  fire. 
Almost  at  once  a  shell  fell  in  the  courtyard  be- 
fore the  house  and  another  demolished  a  stone 
stable  in  the  orchard  behind  it.  All  three  hur- 
ried down  into  an  improvised  bomb-proof  shel- 
ter in  the  cellar. 

"You  fellows  stay  here,"  said  the  major 
when  they  had  reached  the  foot  of  the  stairs. 
"I  left  my  cigars  and  a  couple  of  letters  from 
home  upstairs  in  the  kitchen.  I'll  go  up  and 
get  them  and  be  back  again  with  you  in  a  min- 
ute." 

Thirty  seconds  later,  to  the  accompaniment 
of  a  great  rending  crash,  the  building  caved  in. 
Wreckage  cascaded  down  the  cellar  stairs  but 
the  floor  rafters  above  their  heads  stood  the 
jar  and  the  two  who  were  below  got  off  with 
bruises  and  scratches.    They  made  their  way  up 

[  421  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

through  the  debris.  A  six-inch  shell  had  come 
through  the  roof,  blowing  down  two  sides  of 
the  kitchen,  and  under  the  shattered  walls  the 
Major  was  lying,  helpless  and  crushed. 

They  hauled  him  out.  He  was  conscious  but 
badly  hurt,  as  they  could  tell.  The  adjutant 
ran  to  a  dug-out  on  the  other  side  of  the  village 
and  brought  back  with  him  the  regimental  sur- 
geon. It  didn't  take  the  surgeon  long  to  make 
his  examination. 

To  the  others  he  whispered  that  there  was 
no  hope — the  Major's  spine  was  broken.  But 
because  he  dreaded  to  break  the  word  to  the 
victim  he  essayed  a  bit  of  excusable  deceit. 

"Major,"  he  said,  bending  over  the  figure 
stretched  out  upon  the  floor,  "you've  got  it 
pretty  badly,  but  I  guess  we'll  pull  you  through. 
Only  you'd  better  let  me  give  you  a  little  jab 
of  dope  in  your  arm — you  may  begin  to  suffer 
as  soon  as  the  numbness  of  the  shock  wears  off." 

My  friend,  so  they  told  me,  looked  up  in  the 
surgeon's  face  with  a  whimsical  grin. 

"Doc,"  he  said,  "your  intentions  are  good; 
but  there  comes  a  time  when  you  mustn't  try 
to  fool  a  pal.  And  you  can't  fool  me — I  know. 
I  know  I've  got  mine  and  I  know  I  can't  last 
much  longer.  I'm  dead  from  the  hips  down  al- 
ready. And  never  mind  about  giving  me  any 
dope.  There  are  several  things  I  want  to  say 
and  I  want  my  head  clear  while  I'm  saying 
them." 

He  told  them  the  names  and  addresses  of  his 

[422  ] 


FROM     MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

nearest  relatives — a  brother  and  a  sister,  and 
he  gave  directions  for  the  disposal  of  his  kit 
and  of  his  belongings.  He  didn't  have  very 
much  to  leave — professional  soldiers  rarely  do 
have  very  much  to  leave. 

After  a  bit  he  said:  "I've  only  one  regret. 
I'm  passing  out  with  the  uniform  of  an  Ameri- 
can soldier  on  my  back  and  that's  the  way  I 
always  hoped  'twould  be  with  me,  but  I'm 
sorry  I  didn't  get  mine  as  I  went  over  the  top 
with  these  boys  of  ours  behind  me.  Still,  a 
man  can't  have  everything — can  he? — and  I've 
had  my  share  of  the  good  things  of  this  world." 

He  began  to  sink  and  once  they  thought  he 
was  gone;  but  he  opened  his  eyes  and  spoke 
again: 

"Boys,"  he  said,  "take  a  tip  from  me  who 
knows:  this  thing  of  dying  is  nothing  to  worry 
about.  There's  no  pain  and  there's  no  fear. 
Why,  dying  is  the  easiest  thing  I've  ever  done 
in  all  my  life.  You'll  find  that  out  for  your- 
selves when  your  time  comes.  So  cheer  up 
and  don't  look  so  glum  because  I  just  happen 
to  be  the  one  that's  leaving  first." 

The  end  came  within  five  minutes  after  this. 
Just  before  he  passed,  the  liaison  officer  who 
was  kneeling  on  the  floor  holding  one  of  the 
dying  man's  hands  between  his  two  hands,  felt 
a  pressure  from  the  cold  fingers  that  he  clasped 
and  saw  a  flicker  of  desire  in  the  eyes  that  were 
beginning  to  glaze  over  with  a  film.  He  bent 
his  head  close  down  and  in  the  ghost  of  a  ghost 

[  423  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 


of  a  whisper,  the  farewell  message  of  his  friend 
and  mine  came  to  him  between  gasps. 

"Listen,"  the  Major  whispered,  "Old 
Blank," — naming  the  regimental  chaplain — 
"has  pulled  off  a  lot  of  slouchy  funerals  in  this 
outfit.  Tell  him,  for  me,  to  give  me  a  good 
swell  one,  won't  you?" 

He  went  then,  with  the  smile  of  his  little  con- 
ceit still  upon  his  lips. 

That  was  why  the  two  men  whom  I  met  here 
yesterday  rode  in  to  get  flowers  and  wreaths. 
They  told  me  the  Colonel  was  going  to  have 
the  regimental  band  out  for  the  services  to-day 
too,  and  that  a  brigadier-general  and  a  major- 
general  of  our  army  would  be  present  with 
their  staffs  and  that  a  French  general  would  be 
present  with  his  staff.  So  I  judge  they  are  giv- 
ing my  friend  what  he  wanted — a  good  swell 
one. 


* 


The  France  to  which  tourists  will  come  after 
the  war  will  not  be  the  France  which  peace- 
time visitors  knew.  I  am  not  speaking  so  much 
of  the  ruined  cities  and  the  razed  towns,  each  a 
mute  witness  now  to  thoroughness  as  exempli- 
fied according  to  the  orthodox  tenets  of  Kul- 
tur.  For  the  most  part  these  never  can  be  re- 
stored to  their  former  semblances — Hunnish  ef- 
ficiency did  its  damned  work  too  well  for  the 
evil  badness  of  it  ever  to  be  undone.  Indeed  I 
was  told  no  longer  ago  than  last  week,  when  I 

[  424  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

went  through  Arras,  dodging  for  shelter  from 
ruin-heap  to  ruin-heap  between  gusts  of  shell- 
ing from  the  German  batteries,  that  it  is  the 
intention  of  the  French  government  to  leave 
untouched  and  untidied  certain  areas  of  wan- 
ton devastation,  so  future  generations  of  men 
looking  upon  these  hell's  quarter-sections,  will 
have  before  their  eyes  fit  samples  of  the  finished 
handicraft  of  the  Hun.  I  am  sure  this  must  be 
true  of  Arras  because  in  the  vicinity  of  the  ca- 
thedral— I  mean  the  place  where  the  cathedral 
was  once — signs  are  stuck  up  in  rubble-piles  or 
fastened  to  upstanding  bits  of  splintered  walls 
forbidding  visitors  to  remove  souvenirs  or  to 
alter  the  present  appearance  of  things  in  any 
way  whatsoever.  I  sincerely  trust  the  French 
do  carry  out  this  purpose.  Then  in  the  years 
to  come,  when  Americans  come  here  and  behold 
this  spot,  once  one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  all 
Europe  and  now  one  of  the  foulest  and  most 
hideous,  they  may  be  cured  of  any  lingering  in- 
clination to  trust  a  people  in  whose  veins  there 
may  linger  a  single  trace  of  the  taints  of  Kai- 
serism  and  militarism.  However,  I  dare  say 
that  by  then  our  present  enemies  will  have 
been  purged  clean  of  the  blight  that  now  is  in 
their  blood. 

When  I  say  that  the  France  of  the  future 
will  never  be  the  France  which  once  was  a 
shrine  for  lovers  of  beauty  to  worship  at — which 
was  all  one  great  altar  dedicated  to  loveliness 
— I  am  thinking  particularly  of  the  rural  dis- 

[  425  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

tricts  and  not  of  the  communities.  I  base  my 
belief  upon  the  very  reasonable  supposition 
that  after  the  armies  are  withdrawn  or  disband- 
ed— or,  as  in  the  case  of  our  foes,  killed  off  or 
captured  or  driven  back, — the  peasants  in  their 
task  of  making  the  devastated  regions  fit  once 
more  for  human  habitation,  will  turn  to  the 
material  most  plentifully  at  hand  and  that  of 
which  the  quickest  use  can  be  made.  This 
means  then,  that  instead  of  rebuilding  with 
masonry  and  cement  and  plaster  after  the  an- 
cient modes,  they  will  employ  the  salvage  of 
military  constructions.  And  by  that  same  sign 
it  means  that  ugly  characterless  wooden  build- 
ings with  roofs  of  corrugated  iron,  and  all  slab- 
sided  and  angular  and  hopelessly  plain,  will  re- 
place the  quaint  gabled  houses  that  are  gone 
— and  gone  forever;  and  that  where  the  pic- 
turesque stone  fences  ran  zig-zagging  across 
the  faces  of  the  meadows,  and  likewise  where 
the  centuries-old,  plastered  walls  rose  about 
byre  and  midden  and  stable-yard,  will  instead 
be  stretched  lines  of  barbed  wire,  nailed  to 
wooden  posts. 

The  stuff  will  be  there — m  incredible  quan- 
tities— and  it  will  be  cheap  and  it  will  be  avail- 
able for  immediate  use,  once  the  forces  of  the 
Allies  have  scattered.  It  is  only  natural  to  as- 
sume therefore  that  the  thrifty  country-folk 
and  the  citizens  of  the  villages  will  take  it  over. 
For  a  fact  in  certain  instances  they  are  already 
doing  so.     Just  the  other  day,   up  near  the 

[  426  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

Flanders  border  in  the  British-held  territory,  1 
saw  a  half  grown  boy  wriggling  through  a  maze 
of  rusted  wire  along  an  abandoned  defence  line, 
like  Brer  Rabbit  through  the  historic  brier- 
patch;  and  when  I  drew  nearer,  curious  to  know 
what  sort  of  game  he  played  all  alone  here  in  a 
land  where  every  game  except  the  great  game 
of  war  is  out  of  fashion,  I  saw  that  he  was  tear- 
ing down  the  strands  of  the  wire,  and  through 
the  interpreter  he  told  me  he  was  going  to  en- 
close his  mother's  garden  with  the  stuff.  Think 
of  a  French  garden  fenced  in  after  the  style  of 
a  Nebraska  ranch  yard.  Also  I  have  taken 
note  that  the  peasants  are  removing  the  plank 
shorings  from  the  sides  of  old,  disused  trenches 
and  with  the  boards  thus  secured  are  knocking 
up  barns  and  chicken-sheds  and  even  make- 
shift dwellings. 

Assuredly  it  will  never  be  the  old  France, 
physically.  But  spiritually,  the  new  France, 
wearing  the  scars  of  her  sacrifice  as  the  Re- 
deemer of  Mankind  wore  the  nail-marks  of  His 
crucifixion,  will  be  a  vision  of  glory  before  the 
eyes  of  men  forevermore.  I  like  this  simile  as 
I  set  it  down  in  my  note-book.  And  I  mean  no 
irreverence  as  I  liken  the  barbed  wire  to  the 
Crown  of  Thorns  and  think  of  two  cross-pieces 
of  ugly  wood  out  of  a  barrack  or  a  rest-billet  as 
being  erected  into  the  shape  of  The  Cross. 


When  the  military  policemen  first  came  upon 

[427] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

him  in  the  Gare  du  Nord  he  made  a  picture 
worth  looking  at.  For  he  stood  above  six-feet- 
two  in  his  soleless  and  broken  brogans,  and  he 
was  as  black  as  a  coal-hole  at  twelve  o'clock  at 
night  during  a  total  eclipse  of  the  moon  and  he 
was  as  broad  across  between  the  shoulders  as 
the  back  of  a  hack.  He  wore  a  khaki  shirt,  a 
pair  of  ragged,  blue  overalls  and  an  ancient 
campaign  hat.  He  didn't  appear  to  be  going 
anywhere  in  particular;  he  was  just  standing 
there. 

Now  the  M.  P.s  have  a  little  scheme  for 
trapping  deserters  and  malingerers.  They  edge 
close  up  behind  a  suspect  and  then  one  of  them 
snaps  out  "Shun!"  in  the  tones  of  a  drill-offi- 
cer. If  the  fellow  really  is  a  truant  from  ser- 
vice, force  of  habit  and  the  shock  of  surprise 
together  make  him  come  to  attention  and  then 
he's  a  gone  gosling,  marching  off  the  calaboose 
with  steel  jewelry  on  both  his  wrists. 

But  when  this  pair  slipped  nearer  and  near- 
er until  they  could  touch  the  big  darky,  and 
one  of  them  barked  the  command  right  in  his 
ear,  he  merely  turned  his  head  and  without 
straightening  his  languid  form  inquired  polite- 

ly: 

"Speakin'  to  me,  Boss?" 

Nevertheless,  to  be  on  the  safe  side,  one  of 
them  asked  for  his  papers. 

"Whut  kinder  papers?" 

"Your  military  papers — your  pass — some- 
thing to  identify  you  by." 

[428  ] 


FROM     MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

"W'y?  Boss,"  he  asked,  "does  you  need  pa- 
pers to  go  round  wid  yere  in  Sant  Nazare?" 

"This  ain't  St.  Nazare,"  they  told  him. 
"This  is  Paris." 

"Paris.^    My  Lawd!    Den  dat  'splains  it." 

"Explains  what.^"  They  were  getting  cross 
with  him. 

"'Splains  w'y  I  couldn't  fine  all  dem  niggers 
dey  tole  me  wuz  in  Sant  Nazare.  Here  I  been 
in  Paris  all  dis  time — ever  since  early  dis  maw- 
nin' — an'  I  didn't  know  it.  No  wonner  I 
couldn't  locate  dem  big  wharf-boats  an'  dem 
niggers." 

"Never  mind  that  now — I  just  asked  you 
where're  your  papers  .f^" 

"Papers.^*  Me.?  Huh,  Boss,  I  ain't  got  no 
more  papers  'n  a  ha'nt.  Effen  you  needs  pa- 
pers to  git  about  on,  you  gen'elmen  better  tek 
me  an'  lock  me  up  right  now,  'ka'se  I  tells  you, 
p'intedly,  I  ain't  got  nary  paper  to  my  name." 

"That's  precisely  what  we  aim  to  do.  Come 
on,  vou." 

They  took  him  to  number  ten  Rue  St.  Anne 
where  our  provost-marshal  in  Paris  has  his 
headquarters  and  there  the  tale  came  out.  I 
got  it  first  hand  from  the  captain  of  the  Intel- 
ligence Department  who  examined  him  and  I 
know  I  got  it  straight,  because  the  captain  was 
a  monologist  on  the  Big  Time  before  he  signed 
up  for  the  war,  and  he  has  both  the  knack  of 
narrative  and  the  gift  of  dialects.  Then  later 
I  myself  saw  the  central  figure  in  the  comedy 

[429] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

and  interviewed  him.  In  a  way  of  speaking,  I 
think  his  adventure  w^as  the  most  remarkable 
of  any  I  have  heard  of  on  this  side  of  the  ocean 
— and  I  have  heard  my  share.  How  a  big  lub- 
berly American  negro  with  absolutely  nothing 
on  his  person  to  vouch  for  him  or  his  purposes, 
could  travel  half  way  across  a  country  where  no 
one  else  may  stir  a  mile  without  a  pocket  full  of 
passes  and  vises  and  credentials;  and  how,  lack- 
ing any  knowledge  of  the  language,  he  man- 
aged to  do  what  he  did  do — but  I  am  antici- 
pating. 

It  was  at  ten  Rue  St.  Anne  that  my  friend 
the  ex-vaudevillian  took  him  in  hand  with  the 
intention  of  conferring  the  third  degree.  For 
quite  a  spell  the  interrogator  couldn't  make  up 
his  mind  whether  he  dealt  with  the  most  guile- 
less human  being  on  French  soil  or  with  a 
shrewd  black  fugitive  hiding  his  real  self  be- 
hind a  mask  of  innocence.  After  he  had  made 
sure  the  prisoner  was  what  he  seemed  to  be, 
the  intelligence  officer  kept  on  at  him  for  the 
fun  of  the  thing. 

Batting  his  eyes  as  the  questions  pelted  at 
him,  the  giant  made  straightforward  answers. 
His  name  was  Watterson  Towers;  his  age  was 
summers  'round  twenty -fo'  or  twenty -five,  he 
didn't  perzactly  'member  w'ich;  he  was  born 
and  fotched  up  in  Bowlin'  Green,  Kintucky, 
and  at  the  time  of  his  coming  to  France  he  re- 
sided at  number  thirty-fo'.  East  Pittsburgh. 

"Number  thirty-four  what.'^"  asked  the  in- 
quisitor. 

[430  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

*'Naw  suh,  not  no  thirty-fo'  nothin' — jes' 
plain  thirtj^-fo'." 

*'But  what  street  is  it  on?" 
'Tain't  on  no  street.  Boss." 
A^Tiat  do  you  mean — no  street?" 

"Boss,  wuz  you  ever  in  East  Pittsburgh? 
Well  suh,  den  does  you  'member  dat  string  of 
little  houses  dat  stands  in  a  row  right  'longside 
de  railroad  tracks  ez  you  comes  into  town  f  um 
de  fur  side?  'Taint  no  street,  it's  jes'  only 
houses.     Well  suh,  I  lives  in  de  thirty -fo'th 


one." 


"I  see.    How  did  you  get  here?" 

"Me?    I  rid,  mostly." 

"Rode  on  what?" 

"Rid  part  de  time  on  a  ship  an'  part  de  time 
on  de  steam-cyars  but  fust  an'  last  I  done  a 
mighty  heap  of  walkin',  also." 

Further  questioning  elicited  from  Watterson 
Towers  these  salient  facts:  He  had  taken  a 
job  which  carried  him  from  East  Pittsburgh  to 
New  York  and  left  him  stranded  there.  He 
had  heard  about  the  draft.  He  knew  that 
sooner  or  later  the  draft  would  catch  him  and 
send  him  off  to  France  where  he  would  be  ex- 
pected to  fight  Germans,  so  he  decided  that 
before  this  could  happen,  he  would  visit  France 
on  his  own  hook,  and  as  a  civilian  bystander,  a 
private  observer,  so  to  speak,  would  view  some 
of  the  operation  of  war  at  first-hand,  with  a 
view  to  deciding  whether  he  cared  enough  for 
it  as  a  sport,  to  take  a  hand  in  it  voluntarily. 

[  431  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

He  had  smuggled  himself  aboard  a  transport — 
Heaven  alone  knew  how! — and  fortified  with  a 
bag  of  ginger-snaps  he  had  remained  hidden 
away  in  a  cargo-hold  until  the  ship  sailed.  Two 
days  out  from  land  a  new  and  very  painful  sick- 
ness overcame  the  stow^away  and  he  made  his 
way  up  on  deck  for  air.  There  he  had  been 
caught  and  had  been  sent  to  the  galley  to 
w^ork  his  passage  across.  When  he  had  prog- 
ressed thus  far,  his  cross-examiner  broke  in. 
"What  was  the  name  of  the  ship-f^" 
"Boss,  I  plum'  disremembers,  but  it  muster 
been  de  bigges'  ship  dey  is.  W'y  suh,  dey  wuz 
'most  six-hund'ed  folks  on  dat  ship,  an'  I  had 
to  wash  up  after  ever'  las'  one  of  'em.  W'ite 
folks  suttinly  teks  a  lot  of  dishes  w'en  dey 
eats— I'll  tell  de  world  dat." 

"Well,  where  did  the  ship  land? — do  you 
know  that  much.^^" 

"Boss,  hit  wuz  some  place  wid  a  outlandish 
name  an'  dat's  all  I  kin  tell  you.  I  never  wuz 
no  hand  fur  'memberin'  reg'lar  names  let  alone 
dese  yere  jabber  kind  of  words  lak  dese  yere 
French  folks  talks  wid." 

"What  happened  when  you  came  ashore.^^" 
"W'y,  suh,  dey  let  me  off  de  ship  an'  a  w'ite 
man  on  de  wharf-boat  he  tells  me  I'se  landed 
right  spang  in  France  an'  he  axes  me  does  I 
want  a  job  of  wuk  an'  I  tells  him  *Naw  suh, 
not  yit.'  I  tells  him  I'se  aimin'  to  travel  round 
an'  see  de  country  an'  de  war  'fore  I  settles 
down  to  anythin'.    Den  'nother  w'ite  man  dat's 

[432] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 


standin'  dere  he  tells  me  dey's  a  lot  of  my  col- 
our in  a  place  called  Sant  Nazare  an'  I  'cides 
I'll  go  dere  an'  'sociate  aw'ile  wid  dem  niggers. 
So  I  changed  my  money  an'  I " 

*'I  thought  you  said  you  didn't  have  any 
money  when  you  started?" 

"I  didn't.  Boss,  but  de  w'ite  folks  on  de  ship 
dey  taken  up  a  c'lection  fur  me,  account  of  me 
washin'  all  dem  dishes  so  nice  an'  clean.  It 
come  to  twenty  dollahs.  So  I  changes  it  into 
dese  yere  francs.  De  man  give  me  twenty 
francs  fur  my  twenty  dollahs — didn't  charge 
me  no  interes'  a-tall,  but  jes'  traded  even;  an' 
den  I  sets  out  to  find  dis  yere  Sant  Nazare 
place.  Dat  wuz  two  days  ago  an'  I  been  mov- 
in'  stiddy  ever  sense." 

How  did  you  know  what  train  to  take?" 
I  didn't.  I  jes'  went  to  de  depot  an'  I 
dim'  abo'd  de  fus'  train  I  sees  dat  look  lak  she 
might  be  fixin'  to  go  sommers.  An'  after  'w'ile 
one  of  dese  Frenchies  come  'round  to  me  whar 
I  wuz  settin'  an'  he  jabber  somethin'  at  me  an' 
I  tell  him  plain  ez  I  kin,  whar  I  wants  to  go 
an'  is  dis  de  right  train?  An'  den  he  jabber 
some  mo'  an'  I  keep  on  tellin'  him  an'  after 
'w'ile  he  jes  th'ow  up  both  hands,  lak  dis,  an' 
go  on  off  an'  leave  me  be  in  peace.  W'ich  dat 
very  same  thing  happen  to  me  ever'  time  I  git 
on  a  train  an'  I  done  been  on  three  or  fo'  'fore 
I  gits  to  dis  place,  dis  mawnin'. 

*'My  way  wuz  to  stay  by  de  train  t'well  she 
stop  an'  don't  start  no  mo'  an!  den  I'd  git  off 

[433  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

an'  walk  round  lookin'  for  de  big  wharf-boats 
where  de  w'ite  man  tole  me  dem  niggers  would 
be  wukkin',  but  not  no  place  I  went  did  I  see 
ary  wharf -boats,  so  I  jes'  kept  a-movin'  tVell  I 
got  yere,  lak  I'm  tellin'  it  to  you,  an'  I  says  to 
myself  den,  'Dis  sutt'inly  must  be  Sant  Nazare 
— it's  shore  big  enough  to  be,  anyway.'  But  I 
walked  'bout  ten  miles  an'  I  couldn't  find  no 
wharf-boats  an'  no  niggers  neither,  scusin'  some 
Frenchified  niggers  all  dressed  up  lak  Misty 
Shriners,  an'  dey  couldn't  talk  our  way  of  talk- 
in'.  I  seen  plenty  of  our  soldiers  but  I  wuz'n' 
aimin'  to  be  pesterin  'round  wid  no  soldiers  'till 
I'd  done  seen  de  war.  So  finally  I  sees  a  big 
place  dat  look  lak  it  mout  be  'nother  depot,  an' 
I  went  on  in  there  an'  wuz  fixin'  to  tek  de 
next  train  out,  w'en  dem  two  soldier-men  of 
your'n     wid    de    bands    on    dere    arms    dey 

come  up  to  me  an'  dey  run  me  in.    An'  yere  I 

•    j> 

IS. 

It  was  explained  to  Watterson  Towers  that, 
to  avoid  complications  he  had  better  enter  the 
army  forthwith  and  very  promptly  he  agreed. 
Travel,  seemingly,  was  beginning  to  pall  on 
him.  Then  to  spin  out  his  gorgeous  humour  of 
the  interview,  the  intelligence  officer  put  one 
more  question  and  when  he  told  me  the  an- 
swer I  agreed  with  him  the  reward  had  been 
worth  the  effort. 

"Now,  Watterson,"  he  said,  "what  kind  of  a 
regiment  would  you  prefer  to  join — an  all-white 
regiment  or  an  all-black  regiment  or  a  mixed 

[434] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

regiment,  part  black  and  part  white?    You  can 
take  your  choice — so  speak  up. " 

"Boss,"  said  Watterson,  "it  don't  make  no 
dif  ence  a-tall  to  me  w'ich  kind  of  a  regiment 
'tis— jes'  so  it's  got  a  band!" 


* 


One's  war-time  experiences  is  crowded  with 
constant  surprises.  For  five  months,  off  and 
on,  I  have  been  Hving  on  the  fourth  floor  of 
one  of  the  largest  and  most  noted  of  Paris  ho- 
tels, and  not  until  to-day  did  I  find  out  that 
two  floors  of  the  building  have  all  along  been 
in  possession  of  the  government  for  hospital 
purposes.  The  patients,  mainly  wounded  men 
who  have  been  invalided  back  from  the  trench- 
es are  brought  by  night  and  carried  in  through 
a  rear  entrance,  which  opens  on  a  barred  and 
guarded  alley-way.  The  guests  never  see 
them  and  they  never  come  in  contact  with  the 
guests. 

Under  my  feet  all  these  weeks  hundreds  of 
disabled  fighting-men  have  been  getting  better 
or  getting  worse,  recovering  or  dying,  and  I 
would  never  have  guessed  their  presence  had  it 
not  been  for  the  chance  remark  of  a  govern- 
ment official  who  is  connected  with  one  of  the 
bureaus  having  charge  of  the  blessis. 

I  learn  now  that  the  same  thing  is  true  of 
several  other  prominent  hotels,  but  so  careful- 
ly is  the  business  carried  on  and  so  skillfully  do 
the  authorities  hide  their  secret  that  I  am  sure 

[435  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

not  one  guest  in  a  thousand  ever  stumbles  upon 
the  fact. 


When  I  was  writing  a  tale  about  one  visit  of 
several  which  I  paid  to  the  old  Luneville  sec- 
tors where  our  buddies,  in  the  spring  of  this 
year,  first  left  their  tooth-marks  on  the  Heinies, 
I  forgot  to  tell  of  an  incident  that  occurred  on 
the  last  day  of  our  stay  up  there  as  the  guests 
of  a  regiment  of  the  Rainbows. 

Martin  Green  and  I  had  just  returned  from 
a  four-hour  tramp  through  some  of  our  trench- 
es. It  was  long  after  the  hour  for  the  mid-day 
meal  when  we  got  back,  weary  and  mud-coat- 
ed, to  regimental  headquarters  in  a  knocked- 
about  village.  But  the  colonel's  cook  obliging- 
ly dished  up  some  provender  for  us  and  for 
the  young  intelligence  officer  who  had  been  our 
guide  that  day.  Just  as  we  were  finishing  the 
last  round  of  flap- jacks  with  molasses,  the  Ger- 
mans began  shelling  the  battered  town  so  we 
adjourned  to  the  nearest  dug-out,  which  was 
the  next  door  cellar,  that  had  been  thickened 
as  to  its  roof  with  sand-bags  and  loose  earth 
and  strips  of  railroad  iron.  Down  there  we 
came  upon  several  others  who  had  taken  shel- 
ter, including  one  of  the  majors. 

"When  were  you  fellows  figuring  on  starting 
back  to  your  own  billet.^"  he  inquired.  "Some- 
time this  afternoon,  wasn't  it.^^" 

"Yes,"  said  Green,  "we  had  counted  on  leav- 

[  436  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

ing  here  about  three  o'clock.  But  I  guess  we'll 
be  delayed,  if  the  Germans  keep  up  their  straf- 
ing. Neither  of  us  fancies  trying  to  make  a 
break  out  of  here  while  the  bombardment  is 
going  on,  and  I  don't  suppose  our  chauffeur 
would  be  so  very  enthusiastic  over  the  pros- 
pect, either.  I  only  hope  the  Germans  let  up 
on  the  fireworks  display  before  dark.  It's  forty» 
odd  miles  to  where  we're  going  and  the  thought 
of  riding  that  distance  after  nightfall  over  these 
torn-up  roads  with  no  lights  burning  on  our 
car  and  the  road  full  of  supply  trains  coming 
up  to  the  front,  does  not  strike  me  as  a  particu- 
larly alluring  prospect. " 

"Don't  worry,"  said  the  Major  with  a  grin 
which  proved  he  was  holding  back  something. 
"You  can  get  away  from  here  in — well,  let's 
see — .  "He  glanced  at  the  watch  on  his  wrist. 
**In  just  one  hour  and  three-quarters,  or  to  be 
exact,  in  one  hour  and  forty-six  minutes  from 
now,  you  can  be  on  your  way.  It's  now  2:15. 
At  precisely  one  minute  past  four  you  can  climb 
into  your  car  and  beat  it  from  here  and  if  you 
hurry  you'll  be  home  in  ample  time  for  din- 
ner." 

"You  talk  as  though  you  were  in  the  confi- 
dence of  these  Germans,"  quoth  Green. 

"In  a  way  of  speaking,  I  am,"  said  the  Ma- 
jor. "I've  been  here  for  eight  days  now,  and 
every  day  since  I  arrived,  promptly  at  2  p.  m. 
those  batteries  over  yonder  open  up  on  this 
place  and  all  hands  go  underground.     The  shell- 

[  437  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

ing  continues — in  the  ratio  of  one  shell  every 
two  minutes — until  four  o'clock  sharp.  Then 
it  stops,  and  until  two  o'clock  the  next  day, 
things  around  here  are  nice  and  quiet  and 
healthy.  So  don't  get  chesty  and  think  this 
show  was  put  on  especially  on  your  account, 
because  it  wasn't:  it's  in  accordance  with  the 
regular  programme.  Therefore,  judging  to-day's 
matinee  by  past  performances,  I  would  say  that 
at  one  minute  past  four  j^ou  chaps  can  be  on 
your  way  with  absolutely  nothing  to  worry 
about  except  the  chances  of  a  puncture." 

"Funny  birds — these  Germans,"  exclaimed 
one  of  us,  still  half  in  doubt  as  to  whether  the 
Major  joked. 

"Funny  birds  is  right,"  he  said,  "and  then 
some.  We've  got  it  doped  out  after  this  fash- 
ion: The  officer  in  command  of  the  German 
battery  just  over  the  hill  from  where  you  were 
to-day  probably  has  instructions  to  shoot  so 
many  rounds  a  day  into  us.  So  in  order  to  sim- 
plify the  matter  he,  being  a  true  German,  starts 
at  two  and  quits  at  four,  when  he  has  used  up 
his  supply  of  ammunition  for  the  day.  Now 
that  we're  wise  to  his  routine  we  don't  take 
any  chances,  but  withdraw  ourselves  from  so- 
ciety during  the  two  hours  of  the  day  when  he 
is  enjoying  his  customary  afternoon  hate.  Old 
George  J.  Methodical  we  call  him.  You  fel- 
lows still  don't  quite  believe  me,  eh.^^  Well, 
wait  and  see  whether  I'm  right." 

We  waited  and  we  saw,  and  he  was  right. 

[438] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

Somewhere  over  our  heads  a  charge  of  shrap- 
nel or  of  high  explosive  exploded  every  two 
minutes  until  precisely  four  o'clock.  Sharp  on 
the  hour  the  shells  quit  falling  and  before  the 
dust  had  settled  after  the  farewell  blast  we 
were  gathering  up  our  dunnage  for  the  depart- 
ure. As  we  sped  out  of  the  huddle  of  shattered 
cottages  and  struck  the  open  road  there  was  a 
half-mile  stretch  ahead  of  us  and  while  we 
traversed  it  we  were  within  easy  range  and 
plain  view  of  the  Germans.  But  no  one  took 
a  wing  shot  at  us  as  we  whizzed  across  the  open 
space. 

After  we  slid  down  over  the  crest  into  the 
protection  of  the  wooded  valley  below,  I  re- 
membered an  old  story — the  story  of  the  ped- 
dler who  invaded  a  ten-floor  oflSce  building  in 
New  York  and  made  his  way  to  the  top  floor 
before  one  of  the  hall  attendants  found  him. 
The  attendant  kicked  the  peddler  down  one 
flight  of  stairs  to  the  ninth  floor  and  there  an- 
other man  fell  upon  him  and  kicked  him  down 
another  flight  to  the  eighth  floor  where  a  third 
man  took  him  in  hand  and  kicked  him  a  flight 
and  so  he  progressed  until  he  had  been  kicked 
down  ten  flights  by  ten  different  men  and  had 
landed  upon  the  sidewalk  a  bruised  and  bat- 
tered wreck,  with  the  fragments  of  his  wares 
scattered  about  him.  He  sat  up  on  the  pave- 
ment then  and  in  tones  of  deep  admiration  re- 
marked:   **Mein  Gott,  vot  a  berfect  system!" 

In  the  original  version  of  the  tale  the  ped- 

[  439  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

dier  was  Yiddish.  But  I'm  certain  now  that  he 
was  German  and  that  he  went  back  to  the 
Vaterland  after  the  war  broke  out  and  became 
the  commander  of  a  battery  of  five-inch  guns 
on  the  old  Luneville  front. 


On  the  day  before  Decoration  Day  of  this 
year  of  1917  I  was  in  a  sea-port  town  on  the 
northeastern  coast  of  France  which  our  people 
had  taken  over  as  a  supply  base.  The  general 
in  command  of  our  local  forces  said  to  me  as 
we  sat  in  his  headquarters  at  dinner  that  even- 
ing:       ^ 

"I  wish  you'd  get  up  early  in  the  morning 
and  go  for  a  little  ride  with  me  out  to  the  cem- 
etery. You'll  be  going  back  there  later  in  the 
day,  of  course,  for  the  services  but  I  want  you 
to  see  something  that  you  probably  won't  be 
able  to  see  after  nine  or  ten  o'clock." 

"What  is  it?"  I  asked. 

"Never  mind  now,"  he  answered.  "To  tell 
you  in  advance  doesn't  suit  my  purposes.  But 
will  you  be  ready  to  go  with  me  in  my  car  at 
seven  o'clock.^" 

"Yes,  sir.    I  will." 

I  should  say  fit  was  about  half -past  seven 
when  we  rode  in  at  the  gates  of  the  cemetery 
and  made  for  the  section  which,  by  consent  of 
the  French,  had  been  set  apart  as  a  burial  place 
for  our  people.  For  considerably  more  than  a 
year  now,  dating  from  the  time  I  write  this 

[  440  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

down,  a  good  many  thousands  of  Americans 
have  been  stationed  in  or  near  this  port,  and 
many,  many  times  that  number  have  passed 
through  it.  So  quite  naturally,  though  it  is 
hundreds  of  miles  from  any  of  the  past  or  pres- 
ent battle  fronts,  we  have  had  numerous  deaths 
there  from  accident  or  from  disease  or  from 
other  causes. 

We  rounded  a  turn  in  the  winding  road  and 
there  before  us  stretched  the  graves  of  our 
dead  boys,  soldiers  and  sailors,  marines  and 
members  of  labor  battalions;  whites  and  blacks 
and  yellow  men,  Jews  and  Gentiles,  Catholics, 
Protestants  and  Mohammedans — for  there  were 
four  followers  of  the  faith  of  Islam  taking  their 
last  sleep  here  in  this  consecrated  ground — row 
upon  row  of  them,  each  marked,  except  in  the 
case  of  the  Mohammedans,  by  a  plain  white 
cross  bearing  in  black  letters  the  name,  the  age, 
the  rank  and  the  date  of  death  of  him  who 
slept  there  at  the  foot  of  the  cross. 

Just  beyond  the  topmost  line  of  crosses  stood 
the  temporary  wooden  platform  dressed  with 
bunting  and  flags,  where  an  American  admiral 
and  an  American  brigadier,  a  group  of  French 
officers  headed  by  a  major-general,  a  distin- 
guished French  civic  official,  and  three  chap- 
lains representing  three  creeds  were  to  unite  at 
noon  in  an  hour  of  devotion  and  tribute  to  the 
memories  of  these  three-hundred-and-odd  men 
of  ours  who  had  made  the  greatest  of  all  hu- 
man sacrifices. 

[441  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

But  it  was  not  the  sight  of  the  rows  of  graves 
and  the  Hnes  of  crosses  nor  the  pecuHar  devices 
uprearing  slantwise  at  head  and  foot  of  the 
graves  of  the  four  Musselmans  nor  yet  the  brave 
play  of  tri-coloured  bunting  upon  the  sides  and 
front  of  the  platform  yonder  which  caught  my 
attention.  For  at  that  hour  the  whole  place 
was  alive  with  the  shapes  of  French  people — 
mostly  of  women  in  black  but  with  a  fair  sprin- 
kling of  shapes  of  old  men  and  of  children 
among  them.  All  these  figures  were  busy  at  a 
certain  task — and  that  task  was  the  decorating 
of  the  graves  of  Americans. 

As  we  left  the  car  to  walk  through  the  plot  I 
found  myself  taking  off  my  cap  and  I  kept  it 
off  all  the  while  I  was  there.  For  even  before 
I  had  been  told  the  full  story  of  what  went  on 
there  I  knew  I  stood  in  the  presence  of  a  most 
high  and  holy  thing  and  so  I  went  bare-headed 
as  I  would  in  any  sanctuary. 

We  walked  all  through  this  God's  acre  of 
ours,  the  general  and  I.  Some  of  the  women 
who  laboured  therein  were  old  and  bent,  some 
were  young  but  all  of  them  wore  black  gowns. 
Some  plainly  had  been  recruited  from  the  well- 
to-do  and  the  wealthy  elements  of  the  resident 
population;  more  though,  were  poor  folk  and 
many  evidently  were  peasants  who,  one  guess- 
ed, lived  in  villages  or  on  farms  near  to  the 
city.  Here  would  be  a  grave  that  was  heaped 
high  with  those  designs  of  stiff,  bright-hued  im- 
mortelles which  the  French  put  upon  the  graves 

[  442  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

of  their  own  dead.  Here  would  be  a  grave  that 
was  marked  with  wreaths  of  simple  field  flow- 
ers or  with  the  great  lovely  white  and  pink 
roses  which  grow  so  luxuriantly  on  this  coast. 
Here  would  be  merely  great  sheaves  of  loose 
blossoms;  there  a  grave  upon  which  the  flowers 
had  been  scattered  broadcast,  until  the  whole 
mound  was  covered  with  the  fragrant  dewy  of- 
ferings; and  there,  again,  I  saw  where  fingers 
patently  unaccustomed  to  such  employment 
had  fashioned  the  long-stemmed  roses  into 
wreaths  and  crosses  and  even  into  forms  of 
shields. 

Grass  grew  rich  and  lush  upon  all  the  graves. 
White  sea-shells  marked  the  sides  of  them  and 
edged  the  narrow  gravelled  walks.  We  came 
to  where  there  were  two  newly  made  graves; 
their  occupants  had  been  buried  there  only  a 
day  or  so  before  as  one  might  tell  by  the  marks 
in  the  trodden  turf,  but  a  carpeting  of  sods  cut 
from  a  lawn  somewhere  had  been  so  skillfully 
pieced  together  upon  the  mounds  that  the  raw 
clods  of  clay  beneath  were  quite  covered  up 
and  hidden  from  sight,  so  that  only  the  seams 
in  the  green  coverlids  distinguished  these  two 
graves  from  graves  which  were  older  than  they 
by  weeks  or  months. 

Alongside  every  grave,  nearly,  knelt  a  wom- 
an alone,  or  else  a  woman  with  children  aiding 
her  as  she  disposed  her  showing  of  flowers  and 
wreaths  to  the  best  advantage.  The  old  men 
were  putting  the  paths  in  order,  raking  the 

[443  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

gravel  down  smoothly  and  straightening  the 
borderings  of  shells.  There  were  no  soldiers 
among  the  men;  all  were  civilians,  and  for  the 
most  part  humble-appearing  civilians,  clad  in 
shabby  garments.  But  I  marked  two  old  gen- 
tlemen wearing  the  great  black  neckerchiefs 
and  the  flowing  broadcloth  coats  of  ceremonial 
days,  who  seemed  a^  deeply  intent  as  any  in 
what  to  them  must  have  been  an  unusual  la- 
bour. Coming  to  each  individual  worker  or 
each  group  of  workers  the  general  would  halt 
and  formally  salute  in  answer  to  the  gently 
murmured  greetings  which  constantly  marked 
our  passage  through  the  burying-ground.  When 
we  had  made  the  rounds  we  sat  down  upon  the 
edge  of  the  flag-dressed  platform  and  he  pro- 
ceeded to  explain  what  I  already  had  begun  to 
reason  out  for  myself.  Only,  of  course  I  did 
not  know,  until  he  told  me,  how  it  all  had 
started. 

"It  has  been  a  good  many  months  now,"  he 
said,  '* since  we  dug  the  first  grave  here.  But 
on  the  day  of  the  funeral  a  delegation  of  the 
most  influential  residents  came  to  me  to  say 
the  people  of  the  town  desired  to  adopt  our 
dead.  I  asked  just  what  exactly  was  meant  by 
this  and  then  the  spokesman  explained. 

"'General,'  he  said  to  me,  'there  is  scarcely 
a  family  in  this  place  that  has  not  given  one  or 
more  of  its  members  to  die  for  France.  In  most 
cases  these  dead  of  ours  sleep  on  battlefields 
far  away  from  us,  perhaps  in  unmarked,  un- 

[  444  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

known  graves.  This  is  true  of  all  the  parts  of 
our  country  but  particularly  is  it  true  of  this 
town,  which  is  so  remote  from  the  scenes  of 
actual  fighting.  So  in  the  case  of  this  brave 
American  who  is  to-day  to  be  buried  here  among 
us,  we  ask  that  a  French  family  be  permitted 
formally  to  undertake  the  care  of  his  grave, 
exactly  as  though  it  were  the  grave  of  their  own 
flesh-and-blood  who  fell  as  this  American  has 
fallen,  for  France  and  for  freedom.  In  the  case 
of  each  American  who  may  hereafter  be  buried 
here  we  crave  the  same  privilege.  We  promise 
you  that  for  so  long  as  these  Americans  shall 
rest  here  in  our  land,  their  graves  will  be  as  our 
graves  and  will  be  tended  as  we  would  tend  the 
graves  of  our  own  sons. 

"*We  desire  that  the  name  of  each  family 
thus  adopting  a  grave  may  be  registered,  so 
that  should  the  adults  die,  the  children  of  the 
next  generation  as  a  sacred  charge,  may  carry 
on  the  obligation  which  is  now  to  be  laid  upon 
their  parents  and  which  is  to  be  transmitted 
down  as  a  legacy  to  all  who  bear  their  name. 
We  would  make  sure  that  no  matter  how  long 
your  fallen  braves  rest  in  the  soil  of  France, 
their  graves  will  not  be  neglected  or  forgotten. 

"*We  wish  to  do  this  thing  for  more  reasons 
than  one:  We  wish  to  do  it  because  thereby 
we  may  express  in  our  own  poor  way  the  grati- 
tude we  feel  for  America.  We  wish  to  do  it 
because  of  the  thought  that  some  stricken 
mother  across  the  seas  in  America  will  perhaps 

[  445  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

feel  a  measure  of  consolation  in  knowing  that 
the  grave  of  her  boy  will  always  be  made  beau- 
tiful by  the  hands  of  a  Frenchwoman  whose 
home,  also,  has  been  desolated.  And  iBnally  we 
wish  to  do  it  because  we  know  it  will  bring 
peace  to  the  hearts  of  our  French  women  to 
feel  they  have  a  right  to  put  French  flowers 
upon  the  graves  of  your  dead  since  they  can 
never  hope,  most  of  them,  to  be  able  to  per- 
form that  same  office  for  their  heroic  dead/" 

The  general  stopped  and  cleared  his  voice 
which  had  grown  a  bit  husky.  Then  he  re- 
sumed: 

"So  that  was  how  the  thing  came  about,  and 
that  explains  what  you  see  here  now.  You  see, 
the  French  have  no  day  which  exactly  corre- 
sponds in  its  spiritual  significance  to  our  Deco- 
ration Day  and  our  Memorial  Day.  All  Souls' 
Day,  which  is  religious,  rather  than  patriotic  in 
its  purport,  is  their  nearest  approach  to  it.  But 
weeks  ago,  before  the  services  contemplated  for 
to-day  were  even  announced,  the  word  some- 
how spread  among  the  townspeople.  To  my 
own  knowledge  some  of  these  poor  w^omen  have 
been  denying  themselves  the  actual  necessities 
of  life  in  order  to  be  able  to  make  as  fine  a 
showing  for  the  graves  which  they  have  adopt- 
ed as  any  of  the  wealthier  sponsors  could  make. 

"Don't  think,  though,  that  these  graves  are 
not  well  kept  at  all  times.  Any  day,  at  any 
hour,  you  can  come  here  and  you  will  find  any- 
where from  ten  to  fifty  women  down  on  their 

[446] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

knees  smoothing  the  turf  and  freshening  the 
flowers  which  they  constantly  keep  upon  the 
graves.  But  I  knew  that  at  dayhght  this  morn- 
ing all  or  nearly  all  of  them  would  be  here  do- 
ing their  work  before  the  crowds  began  to  ar- 
rive for  the  services,  and  I  wanted  you  to  see 
them  at  it,  in  the  hope  that  you  might  write 
something  about  the  sight  for  our  people  at 
home  to  read.  If  it  helps  them  better  to  under- 
stand what  is  in  the  hearts  of  the  French  you 
and  I  may  both  count  our  time  as  having  been 
well  spent." 

He  stood  up  looking  across  the  cemetery,  all 
bathed  and  burnished  as  it  was  in  the  soft  rich 
sunshine. 

"God,"  he  said  under  his  breath,  "how  I  am 
learning  to  love  these  people!" 

So  I  have  here  set  down  the  tale  and  to  it  I 
have  to  add  a  sequel.  Decoration  Day  was 
months  ago  and  now  I  learn  that  the  custom 
which  originated  in  this  coast  town  is  spread- 
ing through  the  country;  that  in  many  villages 
and  towns  where  Americans  are  buried,  French 
women  whose  sons  or  husbands  or  fathers  or 
brothers  have  been  killed,  are  taking  over  the 
care  of  the  graves  of  the  Americans,  bestowing 
upon  them  the  same  loving  oflSces  which  they 
would  visit,  if  they  could,  upon  the  graves  of 
their  own  men-folk. 


It  was  one  of  those  days  which  will  live  al- 

[447] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

ways  in  my  memory — my  feet  wouldn't  let  me 
forget  it  even  if  my  brain  wanted  to — when  I 
had  to  walk  to  keep  up.  The  available  forces 
offered  by  Pershing  to  the  French  and  British 
at  the  time  of  the  great  spring  push  of  the  Ger- 
\mans  were  moving  up  across  Picardy.  I,  as 
ione  of  the  correspondents  assigned  each  to  a 
separate  regiment,  had  set  out  at  dawn  to  foot 
it  for  fifteen  miles  across  country  at  the  tail  of 
the  headquarters  company.  This  happened  to 
be  a  day,  of  which  there  were  several,  when 
neither  a  side-car,  a  riding-horse,  or  a  seat  in 
an  ambulance  or  a  baggage-wagon  w^as  avail- 
able, and  when  the  colonel's  automobile  was  so 
crowded  with  the  colonel  and  his  driver  and  his 
adjutant  and  his  French  liaison  oflScer  and  all 
their  baggage,  there  was  no  room  in  it  for  me. 
That  painful  period  of  my  martial  adventures 
has  elsewhere  in  these  writings  been  described 
at  greater  or  less  length. 

I  was  hoofing  it  over  the  flinty  highway,  try- 
ing to  favour  my  blisters,  when  I  heard  a  hail 
behind  me.  I  turned  around  and  there  was  an 
angel  from  Heaven,  temporarily  disguised  as  a 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  worker,  sitting  at  the  wheel  of  a 
big  auto-truck  with  the  sign  of  the  red  triangle 
on  its  sides. 

"Could  you  use  a  little  ride.'^"  he  inquired, 
grinning  through  the  dust  clouds  as  he  drew  up 
alongside  and  halted. 

Could  I  use  a  little  ride!  For  fear  he  might 
change  his  mind  or  something,  I  boarded  him 

[448  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

over  a  front  wheel  before  I  began  expressing 
my  eternal  gratitude. 

This  ceremony  being  over,  he  told  me  who 
he  was,  and  I  told  him  who  I  was,  and  after 
that  we  became  friends  for  life.  He  was  a 
minister  from  a  city  in  southern  California  but 
he  didn't  look  it  now,  what  with  a  four-days' 
growth  of  stubbly  red  whiskers  on  his  weather- 
beaten  chops  and  grease  spots  on  his  service 
uniform.  He  had  given  up  a  good  salary  and 
he  had  left  behind  him  a  wife  and  three  chil- 
dren— I  am  sure  about  the  wife  and  I'm  pretty 
sure  there  were  three  children,  or  two  anyhow 
— to  come  over  here  and  at  the  age  of  forty- 
four  or  thereabouts  to  run  a  perambulating 
canteen  for  the  boys.  There  are  a  lot  more  like 
him  in  France,  serving  with  the  "Y"  or  the 
K.  of  C.'s  or  the  Salvation  Army  or  the  Red 
Cross  and  as  a  rule  they  assay  about  nineteen- 
hundred  and  ninety -nine  pounds  of  true  gold  to 
the  ton. 

"Willing  to  earn  your  passage,  ain't  you.?^" 
he  inquired  when  the  introductions  were  con- 
cluded. "Well  then,  climb  into  the  back  of 
my  bus  and  stand  by  to  get  busy,  heaving  out 
the  cargo." 

I  looked  then  and  saw  his  truck  was  loaded 
to  the  gunwales  with  boxes  of  California 
oranges. 

"What  the ?''  I  began,  in  surprise. 

"Go  on  and  say  it,"  he  urged.  "Don't  hang 
back   just    because    I'm    a   parson    by    trade. 

[449] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

I 

Trailing  around  with  this  man's  army,  I'm 
used  to  hearing  cuss  words.  Quite  a  jag  of 
freight,  isn't  it?  Some  good  fellow  out  in  my 
state  shipped  a  train-load  of  oranges  across 
with  the  request  that  they  be  distributed  among 
the  boys,  free  gratis  for  nothing,  and  it's  my 
present  job  to  catch  up  with  this  division  and 
give  part  of  the  stuff  away.  I  lit  out  from 
Paris  before  daylight  this  morning  and  here  I 
am.  But  I  can't  steer  this  wagon  and  pass  out 
the  truck  at  the  same  time  so  if  you'll  go  aft 
and  do  the  Walter  Johnson,  I'll  play  Bobby 
Waitour  here  at  this  end  and  between  us  we 
can  spread  the  light  and  keep  right  on  moving 
at  the  same  time." 

Before  we  ran  out  of  oranges,  which  was 
about  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  just  as  we 
rolled  into  the  village  where  the  headquarters 
company  and  the  colonel  and  his  staff — and  in- 
cidentally I — were  to  be  billeted  for  the  night, 
I  had  a  sore  arm  to  keep  company  with  my 
sore  feet.  All  day  this  had  been  our  procedure: 
As  we  ranged  up  behind  a  column  of  marching 
troops  my  new  pal,  the  red-haired  dominie, 
would  yell  out  "Who  wants  a  nice,  juicy 
orange,  fellows.?"  and  then  as  we  rolled  on  by 
I  would  fling  out  the  fruit,  trying  to  make  sure 
that  every  man  got  one  orange  and  that  no 
man  got  more  than  one. 

I  threw  oranges  to  men  afoot,  to  men  on 
wagons  and  on  guns,  to  men  and  officers  on 
horseback  and  to  menjjperched  upon_ambu- 

[  450  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

lances  and  wagons.  My  throwing  was  faulty 
but  the  catching  approximated  perfection.  An 
arm  would  fly  up  and  the  flying  orange  would 
find  a  home  in  the  deftly  cupped  palm  of  the 
hand  at  the  far  end  of  the  arm.  The  news 
travelled  ahead  of  us,  somehow,  and  whole  com- 
panies would  be  lined  up  as  we  arrived,  to  get 
their  share. 

A  few  minutes  before  the  finish  of  the  trip 
came,  we  caught  up  with  a  couple  of  French 
battalions.  Neither  of  us  remembered  the 
French  word  for  orange,  but  that  made  no  dif- 
ference. His  whoop  of  announcement  and  my 
first  fling  in  the  direction  of  a  trudging  Poilu, 
were  as  signals  to  all  the  rest  and  up  went  their 
paws.  Their  intentions  were  good,  but  I  don't 
think  I  ever  in  all  my  life  witnessed  such  a  dis- 
play of  miscellaneous  muflSng,  and  I  used  to  see 
some  pretty  raw  fielding  back  at  Paducah  in 
the  days  of  the  old  Kitty  League.  As  the  scor- 
ers would  say,  there  was  an  error  for  nearly 
every  chance.  Among  the  Americans  not  one 
orange  in  ten  had  been  dropped;  among  the 
Frenchmen  not  one  in  ten  was  safely  held. 

"Get  the  answer,  don't  you.^^"  inquired  the 
preacher-driver  as  we  left  the  trudging  French- 
men behind  and  hurried  ahead  to  connect  with 
a  khaki-clad  outfit  just  defiling  out  of  a  cross- 
way  into  the  main  road  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
ahead  of  us. 

"Sure,"  I  answered,  "the  Yanks  make  traps 
of  their  paws  but  the  Frenchmen  make  baskets 

[451  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

of  theirs.  The  orange  stays  in  the  trap  but  it 
rolls  out  of  a  butter-fingered  basket." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "but  the  real  cause  goes 
deeper  down  than  that.  Baseball — that's  the 
answer.  Probably  every  American  in  France 
played  baseball  when  he  was  a  kid,  or  else  he 
still  plays  it.  No  Frenchman  ever  knew  any- 
thing about  baseball  until  we  came  over  here 
last  year  and  introduced  it  into  the  country. 
The  average  Frenchman  looks  on  a  sporting 
event  as  a  spectacle,  but  the  average  American, 
at  some  time  or  other  in  his  life,  has  been  an 
active  participant  in  his  national  sport  and  the 
lessons  we  learn  as  children  we  never  entirely 
forget  even  though  lack  of  practice  may  make 
us  rusty. ^' 

Which,  of  course,  was  quite  true.  Likewise, 
I  think  it  is  the  underlying  reason  for  the  fact 
that  our  boys  are  the  best  hand-grenade  tossers 
among  the  Allies. 


*         * 


We  certainly  are  creatures  of  habit.  Be- 
cause somebody,  a  century  or  so  behind  us, 
speaking  with  that  air  of  authority  which  usu- 
ally accompanies  the  voicing  of  a  perfectly 
wrong  premise,  stated  that  all  Irishmen  were 
natural  wits  and  that  no  Englishman  could  see 
a  joke,  the  world  accepted  the  assertion  as  a 
verity.  Never  was  a  greater  libel  perpetrated 
upon  either  race.  It  has  been  my  observation 
that  the  Irish  at  heart  are  a  melancholy  breed. 

[  452  ] 


.    FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

Certain  it  is  that  no  people  have  produced  more 
first-rate  humourists  and  more  first-rate  come- 
dians than  the  EngHsh.  Witness  the  British 
output  of  humour  in  this  war;  witness  Bairns- 
father  and  those  satirical  verses  on  war  topics 
that  have  been  running  in  Punch  lately.  I'm 
mostly  Celt  myself — North  of  Scotland  and 
South  of  Ireland,  with  some  Welsh  and  a  little 
English  mixed  up  in  my  strain — and  I  feel  my- 
self qualified  to  speak  on  these  matters. 

Another  common  delusion  among  outsiders 
and  particularly  among  Americans  is  that  Eng- 
lishmen are  stolid  unimaginative  creatures  who 
fail  to  show  their  feelings  in  moments  of  stress 
because  they  haven't  any  great  flow  of  feelings 
to  show.  Now,  as  a  general  proposition,  I  think 
it  may  be  figured  that  a  Frenchman  on  becom- 
ing sentimental  will  give  free  vent  to  the 
thoughts  that  are  in  his  heart;  that  an  Ameri- 
can will  try  to  hide  his  emotions  under  a  mask 
of  levity  and  that  an  Englishman,  expressing 
after  a  somewhat  different  pattern  the  racial 
embarrassment  which  he  shares  with  the  Amer- 
ican, will  seek  to  appear  outwardly  indifferent, 
incidentally  becoming  more  or  less  inarticulate. 
The  Frenchman  takes  no  shame  to  himself  that 
he  weeps  or  sings  in  public;  the  Yankee  is  apt 
to  laugh  very  loudly;  the  Englishman  will  be 
mute  and  will  exhibit  slight  confusion  which  by 
some  might  be  mistaken  for  mental  awkward- 
ness. But  there  are  exceptions  to  all  rules.  In 
so  far  as  the  rule  pertains  to  the  Britisher,  I 

[453  ] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

am  thinking  of  two  exceptions.  To  one  of 
these  instances  I  was  an  eye-witness;  the  other 
incident  was  told  to  me  by  a  man  who  had 
been  present  when  it  occurred.  He  said  he  was 
passing  through  Charing  Cross  station  one 
night  when  he  saw  two  Canadian  subalterns 
emerging  from  one  of  the  refreshment  booths. 
Both  of  them  had  been  wounded.  One  had  his 
right  arm  in  a  sling  and  limped  as  he  walked. 
The  other  was  that  most  pitiable  spectacle 
which  this  war  can  offer — a  young  man  blinded. 
Across  his  eyes  was  drawn  a  white  cloth  band 
and  he  moved  with  the  uncertain  fumbling  gait 
of  one  upon  whom  this  affliction  has  newly 
come.  With  his  uninjured  arm  the  lame  youth 
was  steering  his  companion.  The  two  boys — 
for  they  were  only  boys,  my  informant  said — 
halted  in  an  arched  exitway  to  put  on  their 
top-coats  before  stepping  out  into  the  drizzle. 
The  crippled  officer  released  his  hold  upon  his 
friend's  elbow  to  shrug  his  own  garment  up 
upon  his  shoulders.  The  second  hless^  was 
making  a  sorry  job  at  finding  the  armholes  of 
his  coat,  when  an  elderly  officer  with  the  badges 
of  a  major-general  upon  his  shoulders  and  a 
breast  loaded  with  decorations,  stepped  up  and 
with  the  words,  "Let  me  help  you,  please," 
held  the  coat  in  the  proper  position  while  deft- 
ly he  guided  the  blind  boy's  limbs  into  the 
sleeve  openings. 

All  in  a  second  the  unexpected  denouement 
came.     The  youngster  reached  in  his  pocket, 

[  454] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

then  felt  for  the  hand  of  his  volunteer  who  had 
come  to  his  assistance.  "Thank  you  very 
much,"  he  said.  And  there  in  the  palm  of  the 
astonished  general  lay  a  shilling. 

The  other  lieutenant  hobbled  to  his  com- 
rade's side.  He  may  have  meant  to  whisper, 
but  in  his  distress  he  fairly  shouted  it  out: 
"You've  just  handed  a  tip  to  a  major-general!" 

Horrified,  the  blind  boy  spun  about  on  his 
heels  to  apologise. 

"I'm  so  sorry,  sir,"  he  gasped.  "I — I 
thought  it  was  a  porter,  of  course.  I  beg  your 
pardon,  a  thousand  times,  sir.  I  hope  you'll  for- 
give me — you  know,  I  can't  see  any  more, 
sir."  And  with  that  he  held  out  his  hand  to 
take  back  the  miserable  coin. 

The  splendid-looking  old  man  put  both  his 
hands  upon  the  lad's  shoulders.  His  ruddy 
face  was  quivering  and  the  tears  were  running 
down  his  cheeks. 

"Please  don't,  please  don't,"  he  gulped,  al- 
most incoherently.  "I  want  to  keep  your  shil- 
ling, if  you  don't  mind.  Why  God  bless  you, 
my  boy,  I  want  to  keep  it  always.  I  wouldn't 
take  a  thousand  pounds  for  it." 

And  then  falling  back  one  pace  he  saluted 
the  lad  with  all  the  reverence  he  would  have 
accorded  his  commander-in-chief  or  his  king. 

Here  is  the  other  thing,  the  one  of  which  I 
speak  as  having  first-hand  knowledge.  Three 
of  us,  returning  by  automobile  from  a  visit  to 
the  Verdun  massif,  took  a  detour  in  order  to 

[455] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

call  upon  our  friends  the  blithe  young  British- 
ers who  made  up  Night  Bombing  Squadron  No. 

.     They  were  a  great  outfit,  representing 

as  they  did,  every  corner  of  the  Empire;  but 
the  pick  of  the  lot,  to  my  way  of  thinking,  were 
Big  Bill  and  the  Young-'Un,  both  captains  and 
both  seasoned  pilots  of  big  Handley-Page  bomb- 
ing planes.  As  I  think  I  have  remarked  some- 
where else  in  these  pages,  the  average  age  of 
this  crowd  was  somewhere  around  twenty-two. 

This  fine  spring  night  we  arrived  at  their 
headquarters  opportunely  for  there  was  to  be  a 
raiding  expedition  to  the  Rhine  Valley.  First 
though,  there  was  a  good  dinner  at  which  we 
were  unexpected  but  nonetheless  welcome 
guests.  Catch  a  lot  of  English  lads  letting  a 
little  thing  like  the  prospect  of  a  four  hundred 
mile  air  jaunt  into  Germany  and  back  inter- 
fere with  their  dinner. 

Just  before  the  long,  lazy  twilight  greyed 
away,  to  be  succeeded  by  the  silver  radiance  of 
the  moonlight,  all  hands  started  for  the  han- 
gars a  mile  or  two  away  across  on  the  other 
side  of  the  patch  of  woods  which  surrounded 
the  camp.  Upon  the  running-boards  of  our  car 
we  carried  an  overflow  of  six  or  eight  airmen; 
the  rest  walked.  Clinging  alongside  me  where 
I  rode  in  the  front  seat,  was  a  tall,  slender  boy 
— a  captain  for  all  his  youth — whom  I  shall  call 
Wilkins,  which  wasn't  his  name  but  is  near 
enough  to  it.  He  was  the  minstrel  of  the  squad- 
ron; could  play  on  half  a  dozen  instruments,  in- 

[  456  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

eluding  the  piano,  and  sing  Cockney  ballads 
with  a  lovely  nasal  whine. 

At  the  field  our  added  passengers  dropped  off 
and  each  ran  to  superintend  the  soldier  crews 
as  they  went  over  the  planes,  tuning  them  up. 
After  a  little  while  the  signal  for  departure 
came.  One  after  another  thirteen  machines  got 
away,  each  bearing  its  pilot  and  its  gunner-ob- 
server and  with  its  freight  of  great  bombs  dan- 
gling from  its  undersides  as  it  rose  and  went 
soaring  away  toward  the  northeast,  making  a 
wonderful  picture,  if  in  rising,  it  chanced  to 
cut  across  the  white  white  disk  of  a  splendid 
full  moon  which  had  just  pushed  itself  clear  of 
the  wooded  mountainside. 

Next  day  about  noon-time  our  route  again 
brought  us  within  ten  miles  of  the  squadron's 
camp  and  we  decided  to  turn  aside  that  way 
for  an  hour  or  so  and  learn  the  results  of  the 
raid.  Sprawled  about  the  big  living-room  of 
their  community  house  in  the  birch  forest,  we 
found  a  score  or  more  of  our  late  hosts. 

"Well,  what  sort  of  a  show  did  you  put  on 
last  night?"  one  of  us  inquired  as  we  entered. 

"Oh,  a  priceless  show,"  came  the  answer 
from  one.  "We  gave  the  dear  old  Boche  a 
sultry  evenin'  and  make  no  ruddy  error  about 
it.  Spilt  our  little  pills  all  over  Mannheim  and 
Treves.  Scored  a  lot  of  direct  hits  too,  as  well 
as  one  might  judge  while  comin'  away  in  more 
or  less  of  a  hurry." 

"It  was  rippin'  fun  while  it  lasted,"  put  in 

[457] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

another.  "We  didn't  get  back  though  until 
nearly  four  o'clock  this  mornin'.  It  left  me  feel- 
in'  rather  seedy — I  must  have  my  beauty  sleep 
or  I'm  no  good  for  the  whole  day."  Behind  his 
hand  he  yawned. 

Now  ordinarily,  the  next  question  would 
have  been  framed  with  a  view  to  finding  out 
whether  all  the  bombers  had  safely  returned; 
but  the  airman's  code  of  ethics  forbade.  It 
was  perfectly  proper  to  inquire  regarding  the 
ejffects  of  a  raid  into  hostile  territory  but  the 
outsider  must  refrain  from  seeking  information 
regarding  any  losses  on  the  part  of  the  raiders 
until  one  of  them  volunteered  the  news  of  his 
own  accord. 

But  there  was  no  rule  against  our  silently 
counting  noses  and  this  we  did,  industriously. 
As  nearly  as  I  could  make  out  there  were,  of 
those  whom  we  knew  had  participated  in  the 
expedition,  five  or  six  missing  from  the  assem- 
bled company;  but  then  of  course  the  absentees 
might  be  asleep  in  their  quarters. 

It  struck  the  three  of  us,  and  in  my  own 
ease  I  know  the  impression  deepened  as  the 
minutes  passed,  that  for  all  their  kindly  hospi- 
tality and  all  their  solicitude  that  we  should 
feel  at  home,  there  was  a  common  depression 
prevalent  among  them.  Some,  we  thought  be- 
trayed their  feelings  by  a  silence  not  habitual 
among  these  high-spirited  youths.  Some 
seemed  abstracted  and  some  just  a  trifle  irri- 
table.   And  when  this  one  or  that  described  the 

[458  ] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

bombing  of  the  enemy  towns  which  had  been 
their  particular  targets  I  was  sure  I  detected 
something  forced  about  the  enthusiasm  he  out 
into  his  speech. 

Presently  there  befell  one  of  those  awkv:ard 
little  silences  which  inevitably  occur  in  any 
gathering  where  the  spirit  of  things  is  a  bit 
forced  and  strained.  It  was  broken  by  a  lanky 
twenty -year-old  flyer. 

*'Hm — "  he  began,  clearing  his  throat  and 
striving  to  make  his  tone  casual,  *'you  know, 
Wilkins  and  his  observer  didn't  get  back." 

That  was  all — no  details  of  how  his  two 
mates  had  gone  rocketing  down  somewhere  be- 
hind the  German  lines  probably  to  instant 
death.  In  these  few  words  he  stated  the  bald 
fact  of  it  and  then  he  looked  awa^^  suddenly 
and  unduly  interested  in  the  movements  of 
somebody  passing  by  one  of  the  open  win- 
dows. 

On  my  right  hand  sat  that  winning  little 
chap  whom  his  mates  called  the  Young-'Un. 
The  Young-'Un  was  lighting  a  pipe. 

"Beastly  annoyin',"  he  grunted  between 
puffs  at  the  stem  of  his  briar-root,  "losin'  Wil- 
kins. As  a  matter  of  fact  he  was  the  only  de- 
cent pianist  we  had.  Rotten  luck  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing  to  lose  our  pianist,  eh  what.^" 

Coming  from  the  Young-'Un,  with  his  gentle 
smile  and  his  soft  whimsical  drawl,  the  last  re- 
mark seemed  so  utterly  unsympathetic,  so  cal- 
lous, so  cold-blooded,  that  the  shock  of  what 

[459] 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    COMING 

he  said  left  me  mute.    It  left  my  two  compan- 
ions mute,  too. 

I  turned  in  my  chair  and  looked  at  the 
Young-'Un.  He  seemed  to  have  trouble  getting 
his  pipe  going.  His  two  hands  were  cupped 
over  the  bowl,  making  a  mask  for  his  face.  By 
reason  of  his  hands  I  could  not  see  much  of  his 
face  but  I  could  see  this  much — that  his  chin 
was  trembling,  that  the  big  muscles  in  his 
throat  were  twitching  and  jumping  and  that 
though  he  winked  his  eyes  as  fast  as  he  could, 
he  couldn't  wink  fast  enough  to  keep  the  big 
tears  from  leaking  out  and  running  down  his 
cheeks. 

Because  he  was  an  experienced  airman  it  was  a 
part  of  his  professional  code  to  make  no  pother 
over  the  loss  of  a  fellow-flier  by  the  hazard  of 
chance  which  every  one  of  them  dared  as  a 
part  of  his  daily  life.  Because  he  was  an  Eng- 
lishman, he  felt  shame  that  he  should  show  any 
emotion.  But  because  his  heart  was  broken  he 
cried  behind  the  cover  of  his  hands. 

*  4:  *  4:  4: 

Shells  and  bombs  are  forever  doing  freakish 
things.  The  effects  of  their  tantrums  set  one 
to  thinking  of  the  conduct  of  cyclones  and 
earthquakes.    For  example: 

In  Bar-le-Duc,  which  most  Americans  used 
to  thihk  of,  not  as  a  city  but  as  a  kind  of  jelly, 
I  saw  when  we  passed  through  there  the  other 
day,  where  a  bomb  dropped  by  a  German  air- 

[460] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

raider  did  a  curious  bit  of  damage.  I  reckon 
people  who  believe  in  omens  and  portents  would 
call  it  significant.  Just  off  the  railroad  station 
in  a  little  paved  square  stands  a  monument 
put  up  by  popular  subscription  to  the  men  of 
this  town  who  died  for  their  country  in  1870- 
71.  Upon  one  face  of  the  granite  shaft,  being 
the  one  which  looks  inward  toward  the  town, 
are  two  bronze  figures  of  heroic  size.  The  low- 
ermost figure  is  that  of  a  dying  boy-soldier, 
with  one  hand  pressed  to  his  breast  and  the 
other  holding  fast  to  his  musket.  The  other 
figure — that  of  a  winged  angel  typifying  the 
spirit  of  France — is  hovering  above  him  with 
aj  palm  branch  extended  over  his  drooping 
head. 

The  bomb,  descending  from  on  high,  must 
have  grazed  the  face  of  the  monument.  A 
great  hole  in  the  pavement  shows  where  it  ex- 
ploded. One  flying  fragment  sheared  away  the 
fingers  and  thumbs  of  the  dying  soldier's  hand 
so  that  the  bronze  musket  was  torn  out  of  his 
grasp  and  flung  upon  the  earth.  Some  oae 
picked  up  the  musket  and  laid  it  at  the  base  of 
the  marble  but  the  hand  sticks  out  into  space 
empty  and  mutilated. 

I  dare  say  a  German  might  interpret  this  as 
meaning  France  would  be  left  crippled,  dis- 
armed and  mangled.  But  to  me  I  read  it  as  a 
sign  to  show  that  France,  the  conqueror,  and 
not  the  conquered,  will  be  one  of  the  nations 
that  are  to  take  the  lead  in  bringing  about  uni- 

[  461  ] 


THE    GLORY     OF    THE    COMING 

versal  peace  and  universal  disarmament,  once 
Germany  has  been  c^^^  of  what  ails  her. 

***** 

I  saw  them  when  they  first  landed  at  Camp 
Upton — furtive,  frightened,  slew-footed,  slack- 
shouldered,  underfed,  apprehensive — a  huddle 
of  unhappy  aliens  speaking  in  alien  tongues; 
knowing  little  of  the  cause  for  which  they  must 
fight  and  possibly  caring  less. 

I  saw  them  again  three  months  later  when 
the  snow  of  the  dreadful  winter  of  1917-18  was 
piling  high  about  their  wooden  barracks  down 
there  on  wind-swept  Long  Island.  The  stoop 
was  beginning  to  come  out  of  their  spines,  the 
shamble  out  of  their  gait.  They  had  learned  to 
hold  their  heads  up,  had  learned  to  look  every 
man  in  the  eye  and  tell  him  to  go  elsewhere 
with  a  capital  H.  They  knew  now  that  disci- 
pline was  not  punishment  and  that  the  salute 
was  not  a  mark  of  servility  but  an  evidence  of 
mutual  self-respect  as  between  officer  and  man. 
They  wore  their  uniforms  with  pride.  The  flag 
meant  something  to  them  and  the  war  meant 
something  to  them.  Three  short  hard  months 
of  training  had  transformed  them  from  a  rab- 
ble into  soldier-stuff;  from  a  street-mob  into 
the  makings  of  an  armv;  from  strangers  into 
Americans. 

After  nine  months  I  have  seen  them  once 
more  in  France.  For  swagger,  for  snap,  for 
smartness  in  the  drill  and  for  cockiness  in  the 

[462] 


FROM    MY    OVERSEAS    NOTE-BOOK 

billet;  for  good  humour  on  the  march  and  for 
dash  and  spunk  and  deviltry  in  the  fighting 
into  which  just  now  they  have  been  sent,  our 
army  can  show  no  better  soldiers  and  no  more 
gallant  spirits  than  the  lads  who  mainly  make 
up  the  rank  and  file  of  this  particular  division. 

They  are  the  foreign-born  Jews  and  Italians 
and  Slavs  of  New  York's  East  Side,  that  were 
called  up  for  service  in  the  first  draft. 

No  wonder  the  mother  who  didn't  raise  her 
boy  to  be  a  soldier  has  become  an  extinct  spe- 
cies back  home. 


[  463  J 


fwo  wee 


t  date  Ft^moed 


DUE  DATE 


\  \  - 


1 


Q11171HS57 

COLUMBtA    UNIVERSITY    LIBRARII 


01117  14557 

BUTLER  STACKS 


--J        Cobb 


CGS 


c 

I 

-^    1 


~  '"^'^  "ifllf^ 


'WV, 


